


The Mercenary's Mate

by L_awlietxoxx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adam looked so feral and murderous in the new pics this week he made me write this, Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ben Solo would be the best daughter dad it's the truth, Breeding, Daddy Ben Solo in the literal sense, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, Happy Ending, He didn't know he had gentleness in him until he meets Rey, He hung up his guns but he'll still fuck you up for messing with his babies, He would shoot you for even LOOKING at one of his kids the wrong way, Lactation Kink, Like probably way too happy but whatever sue me, Mating, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mercenary killer Ben Solo, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Pregnancy, Pregnancy Kink, Protective Reylo parents, Rey does some too she won't be left out, Reylo Kids, Secret mates, Shameless Smut, Tagged for violence because Ben does some murder, reference to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:46:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 55,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26830882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_awlietxoxx/pseuds/L_awlietxoxx
Summary: Ren meets the omega on a job. She isn't the target for his kill, but soon becomes his greatest secret.The mercenary has a purpose now: No one will ever touch his mate.“Did you know Alpha was on his way, little one?” He asks, voice dark as his thick fingers trail up one of her bare thighs.Rey knows he needs this transition period when he comes home to her. First, he needs to be firm and a little rough with her, before her presence works its calming effect on him. Before he can fully leave behind the violence that is his reality every day he’s apart from her.Rey is happy to give him anything he needs. Everything."Yes, Alpha," she breathes, letting the cloth stained with his blood fall to the floor.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 174
Kudos: 832





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Adam Driver is too hot when he looks like he could [do murder](https://twitter.com/adamdriveredits/status/1310956519400275973?s=20). That is all.

“Oh, Ben.” Rey sighs when he enters the penthouse apartment in Seoul, as if thinking _‘not again - I just cleaned.’_ But she’s barefoot, wearing only underwear and one of Ben’s giant shirts. 

The timing could just be coincidence, except he’s found her in a state of undress almost every time he’s been able to escape from work these last few months. It’s been a year now since he mated her, and he’s starting to think she can sense when he’s coming home to her.

Rey darts into the kitchen, returning with a wet cloth she holds between both hands as she approaches him. Ben locks the door behind him, drops his bags, and takes his first real breath in weeks as her scent draws near.

Standing before him, she has to reach up all the way to gently press the cloth against his hairline, where blood has begun to trickle along his face.

“Thought I’d stitched it closed,” he grunts, even as he turns his head towards her ministrations while she cleans the blood away.

“And did a shit job of it, clearly,” Rey retorts, frowning as the cloth slowly turns red. Rey cleans the blood from his face until there’s none left - until she’s tamped down her urge to ask what happened to him; who hurt him.

She knows by now: No questions. She’s safer that way.

The air between them shifts as she withdraws the cloth from his face – as he turns his full attention on her. She licks her bottom lip as his presence makes her senses kick into overdrive, eager and thirsty for his touch. His gaze fixates on where her pulse begins to race in her throat.

“Did you know Alpha was on his way, little one?” He asks, voice dark as his thick fingers trail up one of her bare thighs.

Rey knows he needs this transition period when he comes home to her. First, he needs to be firm and a little rough with her, before her presence works its calming effect on him. Before he can fully leave behind the violence that is his reality every day he’s apart from her.

Rey is happy to give him anything he needs. Everything. She’s witnessed her fair share of horrors and brutality in her own life: Enough to know without a trace of doubt that even in his worst, darkest moods, Ben would never do anything to hurt her. She knows she’s likely the only person in the whole world who could ever be sure of that, and she treasures the knowledge almost as much as she treasures him.

“Yes, Alpha,” she breathes, letting the bloodied cloth fall to the floor as she hooks her arms behind his neck and presses herself against the massive, wide form of him. A thrill of heat already starts uncurling deep within her.

His fingers trace along the edge of her panties, while his other hand comes to the small of her back, pressing her closer against him as the width of his hand spans her waist entirely.

“I could feel it this morning,” she whispers, rubbing herself against the solid wall of heat that is her mate. “Alpha is coming to me. I couldn’t wear pants today because I was already wet, ready for your knot.” She hears a faint growl beginning in his chest, feels his hand clench against the small of her back. She presses still closer, mouth against his neck, “Should I have just stayed naked, Alpha? So you could fit your knot in me right away?”

His hand lifts abruptly to her hair, tipping her head back as he seals his mouth straight to her mating mark, pressing his teeth there in the way that makes his omega go weak and gasping in his arms. Willing and pliant to his will.

“It doesn’t matter, mate. I’ll tear these clothes off you and keep you knotted to me all night.”

One hand cups the back of her neck, while his other lifts her up against him at the waist.

“My omega, my pet, _mine_ ,” he growls, aggressive and possessive, yet laced with the hint of a reticent tenderness that sends shivers along Rey’s whole body. A tenderness she knows she’ll begin to feel once he fucks her through the first two orgasms of the night. After the edge of weeks spent apart is worked away, and all his brute force eases into long, slow, sweet hours of lovemaking.

The first round, Ben doesn’t even get undressed. He carries her down the hall, bends her over, rips her panties down and fucks her over the bed until she screams. His name mixed with obscenities and a hundred other sweet things.

The second time, he strips their clothes away as his ravenous eyes bore into her. He flips her to her back, pulls her to the edge of the bed while he remains standing and spreads her wide open to his view.

“Want to watch you take it,” he growls as he lifts her thighs and pushes into her again. She arches beautifully for him, arms spread above her head as she cries out, pliant and eager. Ben watches where their bodies merge - watches the wet pink lips of her part around his cock again and again.

“I missed this cunt,” he groans, voice a rasp and not entirely himself yet. “Missed the way you sound when I fuck you open.” He tugs her hips higher off the bed, angles his hips deeper, until he pulls a loud, strangled moan from her.

“Mine,” he grunts out. “My cunt to fuck and fill up. Missed watching my cum drip out of you.”

Rey gasps his name again as he comes inside her for the second time. Except it’s not enough for him. Not nearly. He’s gone without her for weeks now, and he could never so much as think about any woman other than her.

While she’s still panting, still hanging at the edge of her second orgasm but not _quite_ there - he pushes her to her front again and kneels astride her on the bed. He tugs her hips up beneath him and slides his cock through her drenched folds until he’s hard again.

He ignores the way she begs and whimpers every time his cock rubs against her neglected clit. He keeps rutting back and forth through her slick and his own cum as it leaks out of her, until she sobs beneath him. He fists a hand in her hair and says only, “You haven’t finished serving Alpha.”

He pushes her head down, mounts her from behind, and starts fucking at a breathless, vicious pace that leaves no room for air, let alone speech in Rey’s lungs. With one of his hands clamped at her hip and the other a solid weight at her back, Rey is helpless to move. She can do nothing but lie there still while her alpha rampages.

His brute force and speed slams her through two orgasms that nearly choke the breath from her throat. Held down while he fucks her rampant and wild, Rey’s senses dull at the edges until everything complicated in the world resolves into the mindless, simple high of her strong, worthy mate using her body for his unbridled pleasure and satisfaction.

Her memory stops working for a few minutes, but when she comes to... _Oh,_ the world’s gone even sweeter. She’s on her back now, Ben bent down close to kiss her face as he fucks her all over again. Slow and attentive this time, his thrusts aimed with devastating precision at those spots that make her mewl and quiver in pure ecstasy.

“My sweet, beautiful omega,” Ben murmurs as he slides a hand to her thigh and pulls her a bit further open. “You should be the one served and worshipped.”

Rey nearly cries when Ben won’t stop his gentle thrusts across the deep, secret place that is her undoing. Her noises reach a messy, breathless crescendo, matching the sensations overloading her awareness.

Ben kisses her lips while she comes down. Once she’s caught her breath, Ben buries his head between her thighs and takes his time working her to yet another drifting, senseless peak.

The final time of the night, Ben holds her in his arms as he rocks into her at a languid, gentle pace from behind. He presses kisses along her shoulder, hands sliding across her body every time she gasps and arches against him. He murmurs different things to her now: “Missed how warm you are. How small and soft in my arms. I missed the way your lips taste. Missed the dimples when you smile.”

“Ben, I-” He’s stroking her clit now, seeming determined to put her past speech with countless waves of sensation. Still, she tries: “Love you, I....” He keeps moving inside her until she shatters into countless shining, glowing fragments.

He gathers all of her in his arms again and bundles them both beneath the blankets, kissing her brow as he whispers on repeat, “My Rey. My mate.”

How she missed him.

  
She cooks him his favorite breakfast. She stands at the stove wearing an apron with only lingerie beneath.

He comes up behind her, languid and relaxed like he never is elsewhere, to rest his hands on her hips and breathe in a lungful of her scent.

Rey smiles, pressing herself back against him teasingly even as she scolds, “Set the table, you big lug.”

They laugh across the kitchen table, Rey grinning as she feeds him a strip of bacon with her fingers.

“Wait here a second,” Ben says before they clear away the dishes. He disappears into the foyer for a moment, where he’d dropped his bag the night before and hadn’t yet retrieved it.

He returns with a small box in his hands.

“I brought you something, sweetheart.”

Rey’s eyes light up.

“What is it?”

Ben places the box on the table before her, letting her do the honors of unwrapping and cracking it open.

The gasp never even escapes her throat.

Nestled in the box, an elegant necklace of silver shines up at her with a single radiant diamond – just the size to suit her neck perfectly.

The diamond sparkles in the light as she lifts it from the box, its clarity evident.

“Let me,” he says. He takes the necklace and places it gently at her throat, sweeping her hair over one shoulder so he can close the clasp.

Rey turns to him with a smile that outshines the diamond.

“Thank you, mate. It’s beautiful.”

Ben cups her face in one huge hand. Rather than the jewel, he looks only into her eyes.

“Now it is.”

Rey loves when Ben completely takes control while he’s inside her. She loves being held in his lap, split open on his cock as he holds her at the hips, lifting and lowering her as if neither gravity nor her own strength hold any importance to him.

Rey’s fingers trace across the visible muscles in Ben’s arms as he pumps her up and down his cock. She moans at the feeling of being stretched further open as his hands press her all the way down, her cunt flush against his groin and his cock sheathed inside her completely.

She pants with the strain of accommodating his size inside her. When he grips her tighter at the waist and stirs her in his lap, she cries out when he slides across something electric deep inside her. He grinds against that spot again, until she’s spasming and clenching around him uncontrollably.

“Fuck,” he growls, deep and guttural. “You swallow me up so well, Rey. Like your little cunt is always hungry.”

And then he’s moving her again, bouncing her in his lap as if she weighs nothing. His hands are so big they span her waist entirely; so strong that he controls her body completely. He lifts her, then slides her back down his length with more and more force, until the diamond necklace bounces against the hollow of her throat. Until a rosy blush of pleasure spreads across her tits. She pants for breath and sense, her entire awareness stripped down to where Ben drags her up and down his cock like his own pleasure toy.

He slams her down hard and she comes abruptly, a choked exclamation escaping her throat.

Ben groans, tugging her down on him as tightly as he can get her. “Love the way you squeeze me in deeper when you come. How tight you get – _god_ , Rey, you’re unbelievable.”

He hasn’t come yet, but his grip loosens just enough for her to climb from his lap, kneel between his knees and take him in her mouth instead. Ben groans deep in his chest, hands fisting in her hair. When he gives a slight pull at her hair, she slides her lips down and happily gags as he fills her throat.

She swallows around him and sucks what her mouth can reach until she feels his hands start to shake in her hair. She pulls off just in time for his spend to spatter her mouth, her breasts, and her new diamond necklace.

When she catches her breath and looks into his face, he’s watching her with fierce, awed reverence. She preens under her alpha’s regard.

“Will you clean me up, Alpha? Your cum’s gotten _everywhere._ ”

Without even responding, Ben hauls her up into his lap again so he can do just that.

Rey pets his hair, his head pillowed upon her bare chest in bed when she asks him, “How many this time?”

Ben opens his eyes. He doesn’t want to lift his head from the gentle motion of her fingers, but he knows the importance of her question.

The first time, he offered the number against the soft skin of her inner thigh. Sometimes to the delicate inside of her wrists or the freckles across the back of her neck. This time, he leaves the count in the supple skin just beneath her breasts.

“Eight.”

Ben hovers above her, kissing back and forth across where he left his confession. Gradually, his mouth ventures to the underside of her breasts. He strokes and laves with his tongue until all trace of the number has disappeared into her soft sighs, into the motion of his fingertips circling one of her nipples.

In Rey’s head, she adds eight to the ongoing tally she bears for him.

The first time she asked how many people he’d killed in his life, she already knew his answer couldn’t change what she felt for him. She’d asked, rather, because she wanted to know the size of his burden. She wanted to help him bear it.

He’d hesitated for a long time. When he finally confessed a three-digit number, all the courage in the world wasn’t enough for him to watch her reaction. He merely listened for her footsteps, heart pounding in panic as he imagined the sound they’d make as she walked away from him.

Instead, he’d heard the sound of fabric falling to the floor, and then her bare footfalls coming towards him.

He still wasn’t brave enough to look at her, even as she took his hand and guided him towards the bed.

Puzzled now, Ben looked up to see Rey seated at the edge of the bed, naked but for a bra. Her toes pointed on the floor, she spread her legs in clear invitation.

Ben was at a loss, stalled somewhere between awe and confusion, until Rey trailed her fingertips along her inner thighs.

“Come here, Ben. Kneel between my legs. Say the number again and leave it here, with me. I’ll protect it for you.”

A dull roar built inside Ben’s head, until all the grappling voices of his conscience were drowned out completely. Her voice, mingled with the lure of the scent from between her legs - it was pure, exonerating compulsion.

Ben knelt before her. Her small hands stroked his hair, his face, as he lifted one of her knees up over his shoulder. He smoothed a hand along her inner thigh, his reverent touch followed by light, devout kisses.

Rey kept stroking his hair, encouraging him.

“Leave the number here, Ben. Then forget it.”

Lives taken could never nor should ever be erased. So Rey will be their keeper. The same way her body always yearns to give him pleasure, it will give him some measure of absolution too. All she can give him.

Ben whispers the number into the inside of her left thigh. He kisses the spot. He whispers it again into her right thigh. The kiss he presses there after the number is impossibly gentle, like the prayer of an ‘amen’ in a confessional.

Rey strokes his hair and slowly guides him closer. He hesitates at first, sucking light marks into her thighs as if mapping the sites of his sins. She whispers gently to him, she croons his name and keeps her hands in his hair until he can restrain himself no longer.

He kisses her cunt with open lips. He guides her down to her back with a hand on her hip, then brings both her thighs over his shoulders. When his tongue strokes her clit, there is only holy goodness in his mind. With every hitched sound of pleasure from her lips, each joyful sigh of his name, he is forgiven.

She is miraculous. In her heat against his mouth and her escalating, exquisite noises, she is a world of purity and redemption. She recreates his reality from beginning to end.

When she comes against his mouth, she tastes like virtue.

Wrapping her in his arms afterwards, Ben realizes he’s forgotten the number.

Now, his tally always starts fresh. Every time he comes home to her.

Ben cooks their dinner. Rey smiles at him and tells him it’s delicious, even though the steak is a little overdone.

After dinner, he draws her a bath and washes her hair – a ritual he repeats every time he’s home. After he dries her and carries her to bed, he lifts her feet into his lap and massages them, his hands slick with moisturizer. Then, while she’s drowsy and warm and content, he apologizes for the times when she feels lonely. He promises things won’t be like this forever. Once the world is a safe enough place for the two of them, they’ll be a normal couple who get married and go out in public together.

Then, he’ll give her anything she wants. A white picket fence, a garden, children if that’s what she wants.

This is usually when Rey sleepily reaches out to him until he lies down with her and holds her close. When she kisses him and murmurs, “I already have everything I want.”

* * *

Ben inhaled her scent for the very first time with his hand locked around her neck. His contract had been for the crime syndicate boss on the other side of the room, but Ben was still gathering his intelligence. Assessing for weaknesses; determining the best means to harvest information on the syndicate’s operations for his client before he wiped out their leadership.

The girl smelled terribly distracting. Ben’s own Alpha pheromones were entirely muted beneath blockers to protect the anonymity of his scent. But this girl - standing far too still and calm considering his harsh grip around her windpipe – the velvet intoxication of her scent digs into him like a sharpened dagger through Kevlar.

Ben bites his tongue to call forth the iron taste and sting of pain that will focus him again.

His eyes flitting between the syndicate boss and the three bodyguards scattered throughout the room, Ben squeezes the girl’s neck until he forces a choked gasp for air from her mouth. The bodyguards’ hands remain on the handles of their guns, but no one draws. The boss gives no order – even as muscles jump in his jaw and hands.

Ben surveys and files away every miniscule movement and expression. The only woman within the leadership circle had seemed the obvious point to probe, to determine exactly what makes the head boss tick. What it might take to cut out all his secrets.

“Bold, aren’t you, Ren?” the boss goads, smoothing the front of his ostentatious suit with slow, deliberate movements. “Not even bothering to hide your face.”

“Why would I? You’re the one being hunted.”

“Whose dog are you this time? Whose filthy money did you take for this job?”

Ben’s eyes narrow, assessing his prey’s response carefully as he squeezes the girl’s neck again. “Is this the part where you tell me you’ll double it, if I only let her go?”

He shifts his grip on her slim neck, drawing her back more firmly against his front. When his fingers dig into the skin just behind her ear, a soft, explicit gasp escapes her lips for his ears alone. Her scent suddenly spikes, nearly blurring Ben’s vision as he momentarily drowns in bright citrus and sweet honeysuckle. His defensive instincts panic for half a second, the thought surfacing that she might be doing it deliberately. She might be guarding her boss just like the men fingering their guns.

Ben’s focus cracks again with his intense loathing for even the thought. He has no idea where it comes from. This instinctive, roiling distaste for the possibility that this girl, this _magnificently_ smelling omega, might be loyal to his target.

“Well?” Ben barks at the man, reminding himself to keep his guard ironclad.

The syndicate boss only smirks. “You think I’ll fall into your trap so easily? If you were paid to kill me then why don’t you fucking do it? You fucking filth.”

“Not before I take you apart. Secret by secret and crime by crime. Your entire black market operation will be bled dry before I’m done. Then, when I finally kill you, there’ll be nothing left.”

In a single swift movement, Ben shoves the girl away from him and fires three quick shots into the room’s ornate chandelier, dropping darkness into the room. In the ensuing chaos of shouting voices and gunfire, he disappears over the balcony.

Somehow, Ben had known it would be her. Her scent hasn’t stopped haunting him. He’s no less powerless against it now than when he first breathed it in. All the same, he strides into the noisy Berlin bar and takes a seat in the booth just behind where she sits, wide sunglasses hiding most of her face.

He faces away from her, but she sits mere feet from him. Her scent is at once like coming home and drinking poison.

“Your assignment isn’t just to kill him, is it.”

Her words aren’t a question.

Ben stares straight ahead. He doesn’t nod. He tries to give no visible sign of their conversation just in case he sent her. In case most of the people in the bar are inconspicuously armed plants.

“The assignment is to eradicate him. Trace the black market networks so they can be cut completely, once he’s gone.”

She’s silent for a long time. Ben wonders if she’s calculating and measuring her words the same way he is – how to collect valuable intel while letting none escape.

Until she speaks again, and he realizes he’d been very mistaken.

“Then you know about the trafficking ring.”

Again, it’s not a question. Ben forcibly keeps his expression slack. He’d known this was his goal, but he thought he’d have to dig through layers and layers of cover-up operations and smokescreens before he reached it.

“Yes.”

Silence again. Ben wishes he could turn to see her. Now, he has no idea of her aim. He’s beginning to wonder if she truly did come alone.

Finally, he probes, “Do you?”

And her tone collapses into something revealing, something dangerous.

“Yes. Everything.”

Ben doesn’t even need to read the signs in the airport. Even in a labyrinth of hallways, concourses, and terminals, even surrounded by thousands of strangers – he can still follow her scent straight to her.

Rey. Fake name or not – it seems to fit her.

As she said, she’s waiting in front of Gate 43. Her trench coat and sunglasses make her appear even smaller than usual inside them.

She looks up when he’s still a distance away. Something crackles inside Ben’s head – electric and pleasing. Her innate awareness of him sparks against his of her.

She walks towards him. He doesn’t slow. He fights the urge to look at her properly, to take her in. Instead, he removes his hand from his pocket as he passes her, just long enough for her to slip a list of names, cities, and prices into his palm. He pockets it without ever breaking his stride.

The list is with Interpol an hour later, and Ben is on a plane to Malaysia to shut down the nexus of the trafficking network.

  
“You bruised my neck, you know.”

He’d been the only one in the theatre when the film started. She’d arrived and taken the seat next to him a half hour later.

“I’m not sure I owe an apology. The second I breathed your scent, I knew you were the most dangerous person in that room.”

She’s puzzled by this. She’s not sure she likes it.

“I would never touch a gun. Barbaric tools of men’s violence.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

His large hand slides from the armrest between them and covers her thigh.

“I almost fucked the entire job right then and there.” He doesn’t look at her, but leans down in his seat to make sure the deep Alpha weight of his voice works its full effect. “For a moment, I considered throwing the whole job just to get my mouth on your mating gland.”

A hitch of breath is, at first, her only response. Ben is content to wait, the movie playing on around them. His hand doesn’t slide up her thigh or squeeze – it just rests there, waiting. He’s not on blockers this time, and makes no effort to repress the desire darkening his own scent.

After the air becomes thick and muggy with the escalating fog of arousal, Rey lays her hand atop Ben’s. Heat surges through him when he looks – when he sees how very small her hand appears atop his own.

“I didn’t want an apology,” she says, before she brings his hand to her inner thigh, then guides it up past the hem of her skirt.

Ben grits his teeth, clawing back the wildfire beginning to kindle in his belly. His fingers find her underwear soaked through - her warm and silky beneath.

She keeps a grip on his wrist, pulling his fingers inside herself as she ruts forward against his hand.

Now it’s her turn to lean close, her lips treacherously near his ear when she whispers, “When they were still visible, I’d touch the bruises with one hand and fuck myself with the other. I’d press into the bruises until they hurt again, then imagine your hand and your scent when I came.”

Never in his life has Ben been so near the loss of all control. He’s trained himself mercilessly, honed his instincts and endurance and pain tolerance through years of grueling practice. All for naught. The slick heat of Rey’s cunt, the low noise she makes when he forces three thick fingers inside her, the way her scent nearly suffocated him when she talked about coming to the thought of him… Ben doesn’t know himself. His own compulsions have betrayed him.

He’s fucking terrified.

He’s fucking _exultant._

Sitting beside this woman in an empty theater, every ounce of his will and attention honed to the escalating stutters of her breath as he circles a thumb against her and curls his fingers deep inside – he’s never felt closer to anyone in his entire life.

He’d accepted when he made his first kill that this line of work would mean isolation – trusting no one but himself. Logic dictates he barely knows this girl, and yet the sound of her voice breaking around his name and the feel of her cunt tightening around his fingers is truth and clarity the likes of which he never knew possible.

_Omega. I’ve found you._

And as he withdraws his hand and tastes her off his fingers – it’s the likes of which there’s no coming back from.

They remain silent as the movie ends. She reaches for his hand at some point and holds it.

Neither of them move as the credits roll.

“He’ll kill me for this.”

Ben bites back the vicious growl meant for someone other than her. Never her.

“I’m going to kill him first. I’m going to rip him apart, and then I’ll make you mine.”

His words are resolute as stone, precise and savage. Yet, the curl of his hand against hers is careful and cautious.

The syndicate boss backhands Rey hard enough to send her to the floor. The concealed knife Ben had given her spins away from her hand.

Ben sees red and surges to his feet in pure rage. One of the five secret police stationed in the next-door apartment with him stops him only just in time. They’re watching the events next door through a drone camera hovering outside the building, waiting for one of the syndicate grunts to bring news about the police raids. That’s when they’ll move in and collect the truly damning evidence.

Until then, they’re supposed to lie in wait.

Ben’s clenched fists tremble at his sides as he watches the cretin stalk towards Rey, watches her spin to face him on the floor and begin backing away, her eyes wide and wild.

Ben is not going to wait.

He draws his weapon, thumbing off the safety as he jerks his arm free of the other man’s hold.

“You’ll blow the setup!”

“Fuck the setup. I’m going in.”

Ben takes two long steps to the door before a commotion bursts out next door.

“Boss! Police are swarming the transit points! They’ve hit five sites in the last hour, and they’ve got IDs on some of the merchandise.”

Ben watches the video feed with rapt eyes, only dropping his hand from the doorknob when he sees the boss move away from Rey. She slumps in a corner of the room, a bruise rising on her cheek.

Ben counts his breathing, doing everything he can to control himself. At this point, they should only have to wait another few minutes.

As expected, the boss starts shouting about flushing the transit points. Laptops and monitors flare to life. The secret police stationed with Ben lean closer to the video feed, hardly daring to breathe. A full-system flush means a lock-down communiqué will go out to every single syndicate base, transit point, and auction site around the world.

Unknown to the syndicate, every bit of data being sent in or out of the boss’s network is being copied by the drone outside, and will soon be used to electronically map the location of every single stolen girl.

“Your fingerprint, boss, then it’s done.”

The lock-down signal goes out, and with the stolen fingerprint, the police crack full access to the syndicate’s network.

Thinking the rest of his assets are now safe, the boss turns back to Rey with a sneer. She’s on her feet by now, knife in her hands again as she glares at him.

“They told me you went to see Ren, but I didn’t want to believe it. You fed him the information, didn’t you? You were the leak.”

Rey plants her feet wide and takes a deep breath as he comes closer. She’d never enjoyed the sight of his face, but now it’s even harder to look at – contorted with fury and the intention of cruelty. She realizes all at once how misguided she’d been, thinking this man’s favor would ever truly keep her safe.

“I thought you were smarter than this, Rey. I thought we could build an empire together. But in the end, you’re just another omega whore ready to sell herself to the first alpha she sees.”

Rey grits her teeth. Imagines sinking the blade as far as it’ll go into his chest. She just hopes she can finish the job before the grunts finish her.

“And you’re just another rat, fighting over pathetic scraps. I’ve always hated the sight of you. You were just too stupid to realize the only way I ever wanted you was to one day see you dead at my feet.”

“ _Bitch._ I should have bred you a long time ago, you insolent little…”

The syndicate boss’ head explodes. Rey doesn’t scream, even as every lackey in the room does. Even as a bit of the blood hits her face.

Ben stands in the kicked-open doorway, shotgun still raised in his hands. Five others rush in after him, shouting at the syndicate men to get down on the floor. Ben doesn’t move, staring at the crumpled body with his mouth twisted in contempt.

Rey, for her part, stares only at him. She’s learned the true nature of a man always reveals itself in the act of killing. Ben’s demeanor is hyper-focused, almost eerily calm. The fury that guided his shot is betrayed only in his dark, burning eyes. She finds no satisfaction or sadistic glee in his face – none of the irreverence for human life she’s always so detested in the criminals who kept her hostage.

His gaze lurches upwards until their eyes lock. His rage is gone - replaced by relief and concern. It’s her he did this for. Not his own ego. And in a mere instant, Rey knows everything she needs to know about him. She knows he, finally, is the one who will keep her safe.

A voice abruptly cuts into their silent connection.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to come with us. We’re going to need your testimony on record. The more info you can give, the more likely we can get you off charges….”

“No.”

Ben speaks the one word with biting finality, making the whole room go quiet and every set of eyes turn towards him.

“No. She comes with me.”

“Ren, your job is over. Go collect your payment and move on. This isn’t your concern anymore. Our job starts now, and that means criminal litigation and accountability.”

Ben doesn’t move, but the click of his fingers rotating the shotgun barrel to line up another round echoes unmistakably.

When he speaks again, his voice carries menacing authority.

“You nor any of your men ever saw her. She was never here. And she comes with me.”

The deep Alpha weight in his words demands obeisance. It demands response. The police officer standing near Rey looks between her and Ren, unsure what to do as the force of his words hangs in the air.

Standing in his place, a man like the syndicate boss he just gunned down would have waited until his will was obeyed. Until Rey crossed the floor to come to him – the performance of her deference acting as currency amongst men warring for dominance.

Instead, Ben crosses the floor himself. He comes to her side until he’s close enough to shield her from view.

“Are we going to have a problem here?” Ben asks, voice low and dangerous.

Rey shifts slightly closer to him, her hands finding his arm and holding on.

After a long, tense moment, the officer finally shakes his head.

“No, no problem. The girl hasn’t been seen in the last week.”

“Good.”

Ben takes Rey’s hand. He leads her out from the room, and out from her cage.

* * *

“Were you ever…. I mean, did they ever… to you…?”

Just once, Ben has to ask. The horrors he imagines are becoming unbearable.

Rey looks away. Not because she’s ashamed, but because it all seems so far away now – a different world entirely, since she became Ben’s.

“Yeah. A few times, but I don’t really remember. Even right afterwards, I didn’t. I think my mind just tried to erase it while it happened.”

Ben never, ever becomes violent in Rey’s presence. But right now, she can sense it from him loud and clear.

She sighs as she reaches for one of his hands, as she draws close enough to let him breathe in calming lungfuls of her scent.

“I know you’re thinking of tracking them down. Killing them. But Ben, please don’t.”

His jaw is more tense than she’s ever seen it.

“Why shouldn’t I?” he bites out, eyes narrow.

Rey rubs her thumb against the back of his hand, trying to soothe him.

“Because I hardly even remember them and I want it to stay that way. I don’t want you anywhere near them. I don’t want you to have anything to do with them. I don’t want to think about bits of their scent or their blood on you…”

Ben sees her growing agitated and his entire demeanor immediately shifts. His hostility evaporates as he reaches to pull her close, his voice tempered.

“I’m sorry, Rey. I’ll listen to you.”

She mumbles something in gratitude as she buries her face against his chest. He holds her for a long time, hating himself for asking her in the first place and causing her pain.

Then dread opens up as a terrible thought occurs to him.

“Rey… You’ll tell me, won’t you? If I’m ever… too rough with you? If I ever do something you don’t like?”

Rey pulls back slightly, expression shocked.

“Ben – _never_. You always sense what I want and what I can handle.”

“But you would tell me, wouldn’t you? Please, promise me, Rey.”

Surprised by his sincere insistence, Rey nods. It feels ridiculous even saying it, but it’s no harm. “Sure, I promise.”

Ben seems to breathe a sigh of relief. He draws her close and bends his head to press a row of soft, slow kisses along her neck.

“Now,” he murmurs – words sprinkled between each kiss, “I’m going to make you come at least twice with my mouth.”

His lips linger just below her ear – the place that makes her arch into him and whimper in bliss.

“And then…” he kisses his way slowly to the corner of her mouth. “I’m going to make love to you until you forget the rest of the world even exists.”

* * *

Sometimes, Ben wakes screaming. He dreams horrors he would never tell Rey. When she’s beside him in bed, she draws him into her arms – his head in her lap or pillowed against her chest. She’ll stroke his hair and hum, until he calms and sleeps again. In the morning, she never asks.

When he wakes alone, on some job with no one to keep the terrors of his own past at bay, he curls up and whimpers Rey’s name to himself until he falls asleep again.

* * *

Ben never had much faith in the system. If it worked, people wouldn’t need to hire men like him. So, he’s not particularly surprised that Interpol failed to round up and pacify the entire syndicate.

Now and then, their goons still try to hunt him down.

After they whine about Ben killing their leader, they usually levy the additional charge: “We know you stole the boss’ girl. One day, we’ll make sure you lose her.”

Ben usually deflects: “I killed her. As if I’d want his used-up slut.”

After he kills the men who come after him, he’ll be angry for a while. Angry that the world isn’t safe enough yet for him to give his mate everything he promised. Angry that, for now, keeping her safe still means keeping her separate from the world.

Rey, who should thrive in the sunshine. One day, Ben swears to himself he’ll take her to the ocean. He’ll walk with her through the streets of wherever she wants to live, unarmed and hand in hand. He’ll marry her in a church in front of lots of people and kiss her too enthusiastically at the altar.

One day.

* * *

Ben is captured in Pakistan. For a month, he tries to escape from the underground holding cell to no avail.

He hasn’t seen the sun in weeks. He’s given barely enough food. His strength is beginning to desert him.

Then, he feels it. He doesn’t know what day or month it is anymore, but he feels that unmistakable lurch deep in his belly. A visceral need to go to his mate.

Even what could be miles underground, Ben suddenly becomes aware of Rey – thousands of miles away in their Paris flat. He feels that prick in his belly kindle into an insatiable and unstoppable flame.

His mate’s heat is coming. He feels her body calling him to her, and knows nothing will stop him.

_Nothing._

Ben doesn’t eat for two days – until three guards come together to force feed him. They’re careless when they open his cell, thinking he’ll be weak with hunger by now.

They’re very wrong.

Ben waits until all three are in the cell, until he spots every weapon on them, before he leaps to seize one by the neck. He dodges a knife, breaks the man’s fingers to steal the blade, and cuts the first guard’s throat. A pang of Rey’s pre-heat pain hits him, and he snarls as he leaps at the other two, overpowering them quickly.

He strips them of their guns and gulps down the gruel they’d brought to his cell. Fuel to get him to Rey more quickly.

Gunning down anyone in his path without stopping to wonder the allegiance or motivation of his captors, Ben reaches the surface in twenty minutes. He walks until he reaches a road, steals a car at gunpoint, then drives until he reaches a city.

He has no bags, no money, no documentation. He sells the car for cash, buys a forged passport and clean clothes, then a ticket for the next flight to Paris. He books an airport hotel just to use the shower.

He sleeps fitfully on the plane. In his dreams, he sees Rey writhing in the sheets of their bed in the Paris flat, bare and alone. One hand works desperately between her legs as her slick flows, tears on her face as she cries out for him.

Ben is out of his seat the moment the plane touches down, shoving past people without apology. He curses the interminable airport hallways as he rushes outside, hailing the first taxi he sees.

He practically tears holes in the leather seats as the taxi drives, as he feels Rey’s proximity and her distress.

_I’m coming, mate. I’m almost there._

Ben isn’t even aware of himself as he vaults up the stairs, up to the door of their top floor flat. He’s completely attuned to Rey’s body – his own heavy breathing and pounding heart a distant, unimportant detail. Without any of his keys or belongings, he has to pound his fist against their door.

Standing just outside where Rey waits for him, the breathless rush and momentum that had propelled Ben here suddenly slips back to real-time. The moments he waits outside the door seem an endless agony.

Then – Ben smells her. He smells his ripe, magnificent mate in the peak of heat, her scent unsteady and ravenous. She’s coming nearer. He swears he hears her voice already as she approaches and then –

Rey opens the door to him. On the other side, she’s flushed from head to toe. Naked. The most resplendent sight he’s ever known. When she sees him, she bursts into tears.

Ben hurtles inside, kicking the door shut as he heaves her into his arms.

She’s angry and overjoyed all at once, pounding his chest with her little fists and cursing him (“You bastard - you’ve never been late before - it hurts _it hurts_ , Ben - I hate you for leaving me alone – you selfish asshole”) even as her scent spikes in rapture and insistent, desperate offering.

He spreads her on the bed with no memory of carrying her there. He’s pushing inside her before he even remembers undressing.

She sobs and writhes beneath him, her nails raking down his back as she keeps crying and cursing him.

Ben swears, harsh and primal, when he can’t immediately fuck her deep and ruthless the way he knows she needs. Without her Alpha here to knot her and keep her slick flowing, he finds so much of it built up within her that it almost blocks his entry.

“I’m going to fix it, Omega,” Ben rasps the promise against her ear before he lifts up onto his knees. “I’m going to make it better.”

He parts her thighs as wide as they’ll go, curses low and breathless when he finds her flushed and dripping, then pushes into her again at a different angle. He adjusts his hold on her thighs and fucks into her with shallow, varied thrusts, murmuring to her soothingly as she sobs in mindless, frustrated anguish.

“Not deep enough, _not enough not enough_. You know I need your knot – needed it for days – why won’t you give me what I need? Ben, Ben it hurts. Why are you doing this? Haven’t I been good for you..? Why were you _late?_ Alpha, don’t I please you anymore?”

His own heart in pain even as he knows his mate suffers so much worse, Ben grits his teeth and gives another sharp but shallow thrust until finally he feels all of her pent-up slick stream out. He pulls out only long enough to let it rush from her, to coat his fingers with it and then his cock – giving a brief, harsh squeeze to his knot that has never been more desperate for her.

She makes a small noise of relief when the pressure releases, except now she’s utterly empty and begins to sob anew.

Ben won’t stand for it.

He pushes her to her front and buries himself all the way inside her in one swift thrust. Her sobs cut out when he holds her in place and starts slamming into her at a pace fast and forceful enough that they both see stars. He fucks her with his full strength and the unfiltered, base instinct of his Alpha. His entire existence is refined to the exertion of burying himself as deep and fast inside her as many times as he can. His whole world refines down to her tight, slick cunt and possessing it completely.

He shows no sign of easing the pace the first time she comes, whimpering beneath him as she laments, “Hurts, it still hurts…”

Ben flips her to her back and resumes the same merciless pace, fucking her as if he means to carve new space for himself within her. To ease her cries and stop her tears, he bends over her and buries his teeth in the base of her neck.

He feels her gasp and clench tight around him, her hands clutching at his shoulders and knees hitching up around his waist as he keeps fucking her past all limits. He only releases his hold on her neck when his knot forces him to still, keeping him buried so deep inside her that her breathing comes in shocked, struggling gasps. She quakes from head to toe, her body stretched to its absolute limits around him. A wordless noise of gratitude and relief is all that escapes her.

Now, pinned in place and so full she can’t move, Ben kisses her brow. He kisses every inch of her face, murmuring gently to her while deep inside, he pumps her full of more seed than she was ever meant to hold. He watches her expression contort in strain and euphoria as he forces more and more into her.

“You are perfect, Omega. So very perfect. You please Alpha very much, with your little cunt always so tight and greedy. You feel like every good thing I’ve ever known. Such a good girl, serving Alpha so well. Alpha is so very pleased with you.”

She hiccups, beginning to cry again. “I didn’t know where you were. Didn’t know when you’d come... If I was going to be alone.”

“I will _never_ leave you alone, Omega. Never. I was late because a job went wrong and I got caught. But as soon as I felt your heat coming, I knew I had to escape and get the fuck out. I came as quickly as I could. I knew you needed me and nothing was going to stop me getting to you.”

He kisses her lips, lingering so she can taste him fully. He kisses her top lip, then her bottom one.

“I’m sorry I was late. But Alpha is here now. Alpha is here, little one.”

A tear of a different kind leaks from the corner of Rey’s eye.

“Ben,” she whispers, clutching him close. “Sometimes I get so scared. Scared you’re never coming home.”

“Rey…”

Ben strokes her wet hair away from her face. He rolls them to their sides so he can hold her while they remain locked together.

“Listen to me, Rey. For you, I will always come home.”

She burrows herself in tight to his chest, sniffling against his neck. “Promise me.”

“I swear it. There isn’t a single force in this world that can keep me from you.”

Ben kisses her until his knot shrinks and he can fuck her all over again. This time, he moves slowly and purposefully inside her, finding the places that make her mouth fall open and her chest heave. Drowning her in unspeakable pleasure until all else is eased away. Communicating the truth of his words with his body.

He is hers before all else, and nothing will ever stand between them.

* * *

Sometimes, coming home to her is the first time Ben hears his real name in weeks.

One day in November, she covers his eyes with a blindfold when he arrives at their London flat.

“Just a little further,” she says, guiding him by the hand through the flat. “Now wait just a second. Don’t even think about peeking!”

He hears her rummaging around the kitchen for a minute, then smells the acrid tang of smoke from her striking a match.

“Okay, look!”

Ben unties the fabric she’d put around his head, revealing the sight of a lopsided, home made cake with lit candles sparkling all across it. Rey stands beside it, beaming at him like the sun itself. His sun.

“Happy Birthday, Ben.”

Ben just stands still for a moment, dumbfounded. He doesn’t remember telling her his birthday. Nor can he remember the last time someone acknowledged, let alone celebrated the day. He realizes he doesn’t even have any memory of his last two birthdays. They’d been ordinary days on jobs, there and gone without notice.

Fortunately, Rey comes to him. When she smiles up at him and places her small hands on his chest in the same spot she always likes, something inside him shakes itself loose. Something he’d long hidden away for fear of it. Something he’d tried to cover with ice and denial – but had always lingered there, vulnerable and full of longing.

Ben collapses just enough that his head rests against Rey’s shoulder. His arms loop around her waist. He’s not sure exactly what’s making him so unsteady on his feet, so he holds onto her more tightly.

Then the tears come. They’re loud and ugly, but Rey doesn’t seem to mind.

She kisses his forehead, glad she can reach it for once, and tells him, “I love you, Ben. I love you.”

She strokes his hair until he quiets. By that time, the candles are all burnt out.

“You didn’t get to make your birthday wish.”

Ben just cups her face, wholly unashamed by his own wobbly, goofy smile. “Trust me, Rey. I didn’t need it.”

* * *

The single time Ben’s enemies find her, it’s in the Moscow apartment. They break down the door in the dead of night, after spying on as many of his properties as they could until they found one with the lights on and movement behind closed curtains. Bound and gagged, they get her as far as the airport.

The first barrage of Uzi bullets crumples the door to the private runway they’d been about to drag Rey through. The second barrage guns down four of the seven men in nondescript ski masks.

The three still standing whirl to see Ben, reloading the semiautomatic with a blur of efficient, murderous focus. He’s not dressed for a job. There’d been no time. But the rage contorting his features could be a mask of its own – the most terrifying thing any of these men will ever see in their brief, miserable lives.

_“Get your fucking hands off her.”_

“You bastard… it’s only an eye for an eye,” the leader stammers, shaking Rey roughly where he has her wrists bound. Even with only his eyes visible through the mask, Ben already knows exactly who the maggot is. “You killed my sister, Ren, you son of a bitch.”

Ben’s eyes track the two goons on either side of the mob heir apparent – the fool who’ll never see a cent of his inheritance now. Ben levies the muzzle of his own weapon at equidistance between them, watching them fumble with their own guns.

“Your sister was a piece of scum who killed even more people than I have. She deserved to rot. Just like the rest of you.”

Ben leaps clear of the fire path as the goons let loose their bullets. His aim precise and careful while Rey stands not far behind them, Ben unloads a series of shots into both of their chests. One crumples to the floor immediately. The other dies seconds later with Ben’s hands in an iron vice around his throat, tightening until his neck crunches.

His eyes searing in bloodlust, Ben whirls towards the leader. He’s never been one to mete out slow deaths, but this time he plans to make an exception.

Except dark red is already spewing from the thug’s chest. Her wrists wiggled just loose enough in their bonds to allow movement, Rey plunges her hidden knife into the leader’s chest a second time. Rey wrenches free from his grip to remain standing, when he collapses in a growing pool of crimson.

Ben runs to her. He makes quick work of the bonds around her wrists, then draws the gag from her mouth with a furious swear. His eyes still seem to glow a little bit red.

Rey raises her knife – one Ben recognizes immediately. She wipes it methodically on her sleeve before sliding it away again beneath her shirt.

“I’ve kept it on me since you gave it to me. I always will. So no one can ever take me away from you.”

Just like that, Ben’s world inverts right side up again. Only, they’re standing in the middle of a circle of dead bodies. Only, Rey’s lips are raw from the rough material of the gag, and her wrists are bruised from the chafing of the ropes. Only, Rey is covered in blood that isn’t her own.

Only, hands with a thirst for violent vengeance had nearly found her.

Ben is the one to slide to his knees, Rey locked in his arms so she sinks to the floor with him.

Ben is the one who trembles, when he hide his face in her hair and gasps in the familiar scent of his mate. The only scent that makes this world bearable. The only thing that makes any part of him good.

“Rey. I love you.”

Rey clings to her lumbering giant of a mate. The way he presses countless, fervent kisses to her face and uses every bit of his strength and resolve to cradle her against him – it makes tears prick at her own eyes as the reality of what almost happened follows at her heels. The threat of all she’d almost lost.

Rey buries herself against his chest, takes a deep, calming breath of her Alpha’s scent, and tamps it all down. She’s with him. She will be strong for him.

“Ben,” Rey murmurs, holding tight to him. “Take me home.”

It doesn’t matter to which of his apartments or townhouses or penthouses. Anywhere they’re together is home. It always has been.

“Bathe me and make me a nest with your scent and put your cum inside me and… don’t leave for a little while?”

Her voice fades just a little towards the end, because this is something she’s never asked for before.

Ben cups her face and kisses her bruised mouth with all the meager gentleness contained within him.

“I’ll cancel my active contracts. None of it matters compared to you, mate. None of it.”

Rey presses her face close to his neck, likely failing to hide how much she delights in his words. How shocked she is – that she can feel such safety and joy only moments after the threat of despair.

Ben hefts her up in his arms. Small and cared for, she finally lets herself slip from alertness and control. She hides herself in Ben’s broad chest.

He tells her in soft, rumbling words that she can sleep now. An Alpha command that curls around her like a blanket softer than all imagining, keeping her safer than she thought possible in this world.

Rey wakes in the Mykonos summer house he bought for her. The doors leading out to the terrace are open, sun shining across the sheets. A tray with fruit and sandwiches and orange juice rests beside the bed. Her senses immediately reach out for Ben, and find him just there beside her in the wide bed.

Seeing her wake, Ben curls his naked form all the way around her, until she’s covered and hidden completely. Until all she can feel is him.

“You’re mine, Rey,” he promises her in a tone that’s soft and steadfast – one she’s never quite heard before. “No one else will ever touch you. I’ll kill anyone who tries. You’re mine and nothing else will ever mean to me what you do.”

Without even knowing she was in need, Rey finds safety and reassurance blooming and floating inside her. She feels the roots of attachment and devotion to her mate wind inconceivably deeper in her soul.

She, too, would kill anyone who ever tried to separate them.

“Tell me again,” she murmurs, voice soft and rich. “Ben, my only love, tell me again.”

Ben rolls above her. He gives her everything she wants with his mouth against her mating mark and his fingers paying gentle homage between her legs.

“I love you, Rey. My mate. My reason for living. I love you.”

It’s been three months, and Ben still hasn’t left Mykonos. Rey sees him taking calls sometimes, but he hangs up quickly. Whenever she enters the room, he sets the phone down and comes to her instead.

He keeps tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling his small, rare smile at her. It feels as if they’ve traded lives with some sickening newly wed couple on an endless honeymoon.

Something seems to have shifted in him. After he finally put words to what they both long knew. After he kissed and rebandaged her chafed wrists every morning and night until they healed. After he spent countless nights whispering apologies into her hair, until Rey stopped trying to refuse them and simply let him give voice to all his regrets.

On the terrace one morning, Rey reaches across to touch his face as he lowers his coffee cup from his lips. He turns his head just in time to catch her fingertips with a kiss.

“What is it?”

She shakes her head, looking away as she smiles. He doesn’t seem ready to voice yet what she thinks he has decided, so she doesn’t tempt fate.

“Nothing.”

She takes his hand across the table instead.

“I’m just glad you’re here, that’s all.”

He makes love to her in a way he never quite has before. When he’d come home between jobs, their lovemaking would often hold an air of the desperate – their kisses shared gasps for breath and relief before their next period of separation. He would fuck her like a man starved for sustenance, like he needed to consume as much of her as he could to sustain him until the next time.

It’s different now. He takes his time. Sometimes he brings her to the edge three, four times only to gently reel her back. He’ll map her cunt with his tongue or ease his cock in and out of her for hours until he finally sends her crashing into orgasms that seem to last for days. 

When he doesn’t draw it out, it’s intense like nothing Rey’s ever known. He’ll suck at her mating mark for twenty minutes straight as he pounds into her from behind. He’ll hold her thighs apart and watch himself plunging inside her, murmuring how she was made for him, made just to fit his cock and how his cum is only for her. When she’s still sensitive and trembling, he’ll nudge inside her again and stroke her nipples as he whispers into her neck: “I’d give up everything for you, Rey. Everything. You are everything.”

Rey is afraid to hope, but keeps thinking it over and over again: Their lovemaking doesn’t feel like a stopgap anymore. It feels like a beginning.

Another month passes. He still wakes her with kisses and coffee in bed every morning. He says nothing about having to leave.

Finally, Rey decides to gather her courage.

Ben stands at the sink, washing the dishes from their dinner, when Rey comes to press herself against his back. His hands still in the soapy water as she presses her cheek to the wide plane of his shoulder blades – as she lets her fingers cling a bit to the front of his shirt.

“Ben,” she says softly, timid and sure all at once. She presses herself just a bit tighter to him, remembering how she caught his scent that first time with his hand around her throat, even through his blockers. Remembers how her knees had nearly given out in profound relief.

_Alpha, you’ve come for me._

“Ben,” she says again, rubbing her cheek against him. “Ben, I want your baby in me.”

He doesn’t stiffen in her embrace. At first, he doesn’t seem to respond at all, but his scent spikes in a jumble of emotions.

She goes on: “Ben, I want to carry our baby. I want to see your face when you hold our child for the first time. I want you to hear the first time she speaks, want you to be there the first time she walks.”

She lays a single kiss through the fabric of his shirt.

“Mate, I want you with me every day.”

Still, he seems to stand immobile. Until Rey looks up, and notices the tiny ripples in the surface of the water in the sink. Until she sees one of the droplets fall from Ben’s face.

Then, he turns so quickly she can barely see his face at all. He clutches her close like he never means to let her go. Rey hopes he doesn’t.

“Rey,” he breathes, voice scratchy like she’s never heard before. “I didn’t think I could ever be a good man. But I am yours. I will always be yours, so long as my heart beats. And that…. that might be the same thing.”

Rey kisses the corner of his mouth, smiling so wide that matching tears start to form in her own eyes.

“This world will never be perfect, Ben. But _my_ world is perfect, thanks to you.”

Ben places a tentative hand over Rey’s tummy, his eyes shining with emotion.

“I’m done making enemies. Done causing death.” He draws her closer, folding her into the safe haven his arms have always been.

“Now, I’m going to make love and children with you.”

It’s Rey’s turn to cry now, letting her tears and joy seep into the front of his shirt.

“Let’s start tonight, Ben. Put a baby in me tonight.”

Ben helps her remove her implant that very night.

Before they go to bed, Rey insists on building a nest. It feels right. Her Alpha indulges her, scenting the blankets for her when she asks him to. Finally, she emerges from the bedroom in nothing but his favorite lingerie, biting her lip as she holds her hand out to him.

Ben sweeps her up into her arms and carries her to the nest she built for the two of them. He undresses before climbing into the nest with her.

He kisses every inch of her skin, before he peels the scraps of lace away from her body.

“My omega made such a perfect nest,” he praises, stroking his tongue across her clit until her scent pours from her in waves – soaking the nest with her readiness to be bred, with her dear, desperate hope for her Alpha’s child.

He presses a slow, loving kiss to her hole, where he can smell a different kind of slick pooling within her. The kind to make her fertile.

“My omega will make such a perfect child.”

Rey cups his face in her hands when he slides inside her. She kisses his lips as he builds up a slow, strong rhythm. He holds her close, presses her to her back in the nest, and proves to her his resolution.

Her perfect, fulfilled scent; the way her muscles clench around his cock as her body readies itself for his seed; the way she whispers how much she loves him – it all coalesces into the understanding that nothing else before her ever mattered.

All the sins he’s committed. All the wrong he’s done. It pales before the act of loving her; being loved by her.

“Mate,” he murmurs just before he comes, fingers already stroking her to lift her to climax with him, “Love. I’ll fill you up with my baby. With our future.”

“Yes, Alpha…” Rey gasps, head falling back into the nest of blankets as she feels Ben pulse wet and hot inside her. He kisses her and holds her open in the nest, while he pumps her full of everything she’s ever wanted.

Afterwards, he kisses her breasts while he uses his fingers to keep his seed inside her.

“Your baby feels so good in me,” Rey mumbles, sleepy but clearly joyous.

Ben draws her close against him, pressing a kiss to her mating mark as a rumbling noise of loving calm for his omega begins from a primal place in his chest.

“You’ve been so good for me, Omega. Alpha never felt anything better than breeding you.”

He rolls her to her side so he can curl himself around her completely, wrapping her up warm and safe in his arms and the nest she made for them. While inside, her body takes in the baby he made for her. The promise of all he’ll provide for her.

“My mate,” he pledges in a soft, devout tone against her ear. He speaks with clarity and peace, newfound and resilient. “My mate to keep safe and loved and cherished forever. To never let spend another day alone.”

Already half asleep, Rey’s never felt more utterly fulfilled and at peace. She finds one of his hands and laces their fingers together.

Her smile relaxed and radiant, she asks only, “Tell me again, Ben?”

Ben lifts their joined hands to press a kiss where he soon plans to put a wedding ring.

“I love you, Rey.”

Her smile grows, before she drifts into safe, sated sleep.

“Everything I want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This grew plot and feels when I wasn't looking. How does that always happen?! I really immersed myself in this these last few days so would love to hear all your thoughts! Thank you for reading! :)
> 
> My [Tumblr](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/xoruffitup)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look through the ten years following Ben and Rey's decision to start a family. They crash a wedding, do a bit more murder, and learn that parenting isn't necessarily any easier than being a hitman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This Ben and Rey just had so many sides of their relationship and lives to explore. From the kinky, to the dangerous, to the sickeningly domestic and wholesome. <3 Hope you all enjoy the ride! 
> 
> A few scenes jump around a bit time-wise, but I've tried to keep it as clear as possible. And.... I feel like I should apologize upfront for the lactation kink part... I've never written it before but look, this Ben spoke to me and made it very clear that that should be included. And hey, I wasn't going to say no to him. He might kill me?!

“Anywhere.”

“Anywhere?”

_“Anywhere.”_

They’re still in the Mykonos summer house, when the pregnancy test shows positive. Ben grows restless, touching and holding Rey ceaselessly as he contemplates how he’ll keep his family safe. How he’ll make sure his mate never wants for anything.

“Tell me where you want to raise our children.”

He sells the penthouse in Seoul and the apartment in Moscow. Rey grew too fond of the London and Paris flats to give them up, so Ben puts them on the market only to buy them back under an alias, ensuring all the property deeds are changed. 

Then, he turns to homes with lawns, lake views, and suburban anonymity. A few with gates and high-tech alarm systems, should there ever be any threat.

Ben asks for her opinion on a five-bedroom in northern Scotland, when Rey catches sight of the price and fixes Ben with a look of apprehension. 

“Ben, we’re going to need jobs, aren’t we? Normal ones.”

His mouth takes on a strange twist too sardonic to quite count as a smile. He turns the laptop screen back towards himself and taps a few times. 

“My last job was the sniper. The one whose brother made the mistake of coming after you, when I was done.”

He turns the screen towards her again. 

“That was the payout. For just that one job.”

Rey’s eyes go huge and wide. The single commission could buy two five-bedrooms. 

Rey plops herself down in his lap, arm around his shoulders. 

“Well in that case, show me some more houses.”

Ben tabs through the real estate listings he’s narrowed down to so far. Each fit the bill of private, secluded, and defendable. 

Rey assesses each one with an entirely differently, yet equally useful perspective. 

She smiles as she points at the expansive back yard attached to a three-bedroom in Montana. 

“We could build a swing set here.”

She smiles wide at an option in a tiny northern France town. 

“That pond just outside would be magical.”

She makes a delighted sound at a listing in New Zealand. 

“The children would _love_ those bedrooms with the turret windows.”

Ben can’t help giving her a slight squeeze at the waist, where she still sits perched on his lap. 

_Children_ , she’d said - so easily, so automatically. Her wonders never cease.

Late that night, Rey is beckoned towards sleep by the Mediterranean air drifting in through the open terrace doors. She basks in the lingering warmth of afterglow licking along her senses, and the secure weight of Ben’s arm keeping her close. She’s nearly asleep when Ben’s hesitant question glides across the back of her neck. 

“Will it bother you?”

Her sleepy, sated brain responds slowly. 

“Mm. Will what?”

He tucks his face just a bit closer against the back of her neck, speaking the words straight into her skin. 

“Living off money that came from death.”

Gradually, Rey opens her eyes. The first and only thing she sees is Ben’s arm curled around her - his fingers intertwined with her own. The strong muscles lining his arm, the considerable width of his hand, and his thick fingers - all devoted now to the single cause of keeping her close. Keeping her safe. 

“Money isn’t good or evil. It doesn’t have morals, nor can it buy virtue or sin. Its power would be no different if you had earned it in some office job. We hold the choice in ourselves. And we choose to use it to preserve and cherish life.”

Ben says nothing, but she feels tension leave his body even as he draws her still closer against him. 

Once their safely secluded, guarded homes are decided upon and purchased, Ben explains to Rey the various places where all their wealth is stored. He makes sure she has access to each account as a joint owner. She’s the one who signs, when they set up a trust fund for their future children. 

“You’re such an idiot,” Rey says, even as tears well up in her eyes. 

It’s their last night in Mykonos before they move to Scotland - where they’ve decided to spend Rey’s pregnancy.

Ben had seemed unusually quiet as they packed - enough so that Rey had fretted once or twice whether he was second guessing everything. Whether he had doubts about giving up his past life for good.

She comes into the bedroom once and sees him hurriedly fiddling with something, stashing it quickly out of sight. She wonders if he still keeps his guns hidden throughout the house, in readily-available places only he knows. She wonders if he always will. 

“Why don’t you get off your feet for a bit?” he suggests as evening nears. “Go rest for a while and I’ll get dinner ready.”

Thinking he might be seeking a moment of privacy to pack his firearms, Rey acquiesces. 

Though she knows he’s always tried to keep her insulated from the violence that had long been his companion, she doesn’t understand why he feels the need to hide quite so much anymore. It’s no surprise to her that he still keeps all his weapons, and she knows it would be imprudent to ask him to get rid of them - not when they both still have enemies. 

Rey doesn’t nap, her thoughts just grow more and more uneasy. For half a terrifying moment, she’s seized by the mad thought of him silently stealing away while she rests here in bed. 

She tries not to show her silly relief, when he comes into the bedroom not long after. He kneels beside the bed and strokes a hand down her arm. His voice seems unusually soft, almost timid when he asks, “Ready for dinner?”

Rey nods, leaning over to kiss him for good measure. Just in case he’s harboring doubts. 

When she pulls back, he gazes at her in a strange, intense way. It’s not… fear in his eyes, that would be impossible. It seems, perhaps, like affection so intense it becomes self-effacing. She doesn’t know what to make of it. 

He holds out his hand, the motion deliberate. She takes it as she rises from bed. She follows him to the kitchen, her heart pounding with an imprecise sense of anticipation.

When they enter the kitchen, she finds the table has been drawn out onto the terrace. A red tablecloth she doesn’t recognize covers it, and candles she doesn’t remember buying twinkle against the sunset sky. Ben squeezes her hand as he guides her out to the terrace.

Plates of steaming pasta stand ready. At the center of the table sits a pot with bubbling sauce and meatballs. 

Before she can ask just when he learned to make meatballs, he comes to stand close behind her, his arms snaking around her waist as he drops a kiss against her neck. 

“Do you remember the first time you told me you love me?” he asks. 

Utterly surprised, it takes Rey a moment to retrieve the memory. But within a few short seconds, she nods. 

“You were late coming home. I think I’d been waiting in London. You’d said you’d be there for dinner but you weren’t. It was nearly midnight when you finally arrived, all bloodied up.”

Her hand finds one of his arms automatically, squeezing for reassurance despite knowing full well how the story ends. He kisses her neck again. 

“I made you lay down on the couch as I tended to your wound. You had a fucking gunshot graze your arm.”

Despite everything - even the very real horror and fear she remembers at the sight of Ben bloodied and injured - Rey finds herself now smiling at the memory all of a sudden. 

“You kept apologizing while I cleaned up your blood. Telling me you were sorry you missed dinner, that you hadn’t kept your word. I finally got fed up, got so annoyed with you, I yelled that I didn’t give a damn about dinner, just about you.”

She feels Ben smile into her neck. 

“Your precise words were - ‘shut the fuck up, you fucking idiot. You could miss all the dinners in the world and I would still love you.’”

Rey’s heart lurches, careening in her chest. She couldn’t have recalled her own words, but he does.

She finishes the story: “And then we fucked on the couch.”

His laughter warms her neck. “Right. Then we fucked on the couch.”

He gives her a slight squeeze, and if she could see his face, she would see it growing earnest again. 

“We finally ate somewhere around 2 or 3 AM. Do you remember what you’d made?”

Rey’s heart speeds still faster as she looks back to the table. The memories filter back, stronger now. 

“Spaghetti and meatballs.”

Ben squeezes her hip. 

“It’s been my favorite meal ever since.”

He lets go of her, keeping hold of just one of her hands as he moves to face her. She watches him with wide eyes, touched yet still confused as he lifts her hand to his lips to brush a kiss against her knuckles. 

“I owe you a lot of dinners, Rey. The more I think on it now, since we decided to start our family, the more I regret it all. Every single night I wasn’t there with you. Every morning I didn’t wake up with you next to me.”

“Ben…”

Her soft whisper of his name doesn’t deter him from what seems a premeditated declaration.

“So with this dinner, I want to start making it up to you. Every single one I missed. Every dinner you had to eat alone.”

The anxiety that had been gnawing at her all day finally abates. She feels ridiculous, suddenly, that she’d thought for even an instant that he would ever leave her. That he would ever renege on his promises to her. Even the ones he hasn’t yet been able to fulfill - she knows they’ll all come in time. He’ll make sure of that. 

And he’s decided to start now. 

Still holding her hand in his, Ben lowers himself to one knee. 

All breath seems to dry up in Rey’s throat, her eyes going wide. 

“Will you let me make sure you never want for anything? Will you forgive all the time I wasted, so I can pledge all my remaining days to you and your happiness?”

He reaches into a pocket and withdraws a small velvet box. Suddenly, Rey understands what he’s been hiding all day. He pops the lid open, revealing a slender, stunning diamond ring. 

“Rey. Mate. Will you marry me?”

Rey has to lift a hand to cover her mouth, her eyes jumping between the ring and Ben’s keen, expectant expression. For a long moment, she can’t speak. No words materialize in her mouth. There’s no room for them, alongside the swell of feeling taking her over completely. She’s not sure whether she’s at greater risk of floating off her feet, or her legs giving out.

Finally, she lowers her hand and chokes out, “You’re such an idiot.” She hiccups as she quickly swipes a tear away. “We already talk all the time about getting married.”

Ben just smiles, and it’s a fond, wondrous thing on his face. He still amazes her with the gentleness he keeps stored up inside him - all for her. 

“I know. I was an idiot back then and I still am now, but will you have me anyway?”

Rey is beaming now, the happiness streaming from her eyes like all the tears in the world. Ben wants nothing more than to see her smile like that every day for the rest of his life.

“Yes. Yes, Ben. Ridiculous as you may be, I will marry you.”

And Rey watches as he smiles full and unrestrained - the way she’s only ever seen him smile a handful of times. Without knowing her fiance is thinking exactly the same, she hopes she’ll give him reason to smile like that every day, for the rest of their lives. 

With the wide hands that have committed such horrors and yet have only ever protected and cherished her, he slides the ring onto her finger. She throws her arms around his neck the second he stands, hiding her face in his shoulder as she clutches him tight. She holds him until she’s sure he knows - she doesn’t think he’s ridiculous. She thinks he’s perfect. She thinks he’s all she’ll ever need.

Rey insists on sitting in his lap, rather than across the table. The meatballs he learned to make just for this occasion are a bit dry, but Rey eats until she can’t anymore. He kisses the sauce from her lips. She brings his hand to rest atop her stomach, where their first child already grows. Into her neck, he murmurs one of his ‘I love you’s - as rare as they are sacred.

They each spare no more than a brief thought for the darkness they each escaped through the other. Instead, they think of only how luminous their world has become.

* * *

“I always had this fantasy.”

None of the moving boxes are unpacked. Luckily there aren’t many of them, as Rey and Ben had decided to furnish most of the house new, but still, they’re putting off the work. 

Instead, they sit together in the grass out behind the house in Scotland, just taking in the sight of the home where their first child will be born. 

“What kind of fantasy?” Rey asks, quirking a lascivious eyebrow at him. 

Ben shakes his head, finding that smiling comes more easily than it ever has in his whole life. “Not that kind, for once.”

“Well, now my interest is piqued.”

Rey lets herself fall back into the soft grass, her head landing upon Ben’s thigh. She watches him with warm eyes from upside down. 

Ben twirls a few strands of her hair around a fingertip. 

“I always had fantasies about giving you the perfect wedding. I thought about it a lot on jobs, whenever I was missing you even more than usual.” Rey turns her head to press her cheek against his thigh, curling a little closer to him. “I’ve realized there was one thing in common between all those imaginary weddings, and it’s one thing that’s a bit impossible.”

“What’s that?” Rey asks, blinking up at him and the blue sky. 

He smooths a hand through her hair. “Lots of people there. Cheering and happy and every one of them telling you how beautiful you look.”

Rey’s gaze shifts up into the sky, unfocused but also rather unbothered. A crowd of well-wishers and loved ones is standard for a wedding, she supposes. 

But the faces of her parents and the people she knew as a girl have long blurred in her mind. She spent too long trapped in the syndicate to ever revert to the person they’d once known. She used to wonder whether her parents had searched for her, whether they’d mourned her, until she accepted it didn’t matter. Nothing could change what had happened to her or what she had become. She could never go back. 

She’s as dead to them as Ben is to his own parents. They’d talked about it plenty and long put the subject to rest.

She hums through closed lips, then finally shrugs. 

“That’s standard fare, I guess. But nothing about us is quite standard, and I wouldn’t change that.”

Rey drums her fingers against her stomach. She’s more excited than she’ll admit for the day she starts showing. 

The day she asked Ben for this baby - the day she asked him to make the changes that would let them have a family - she’d told him her world was perfect because of him. 

Their world is a small, separate place from the rest of reality, but perfect all the same. Rey circles a hand across her stomach again. Soon, their world will be so much bigger.

“We’ve both lost a lot. We each suffered, until we found each other. Being where we are now… I’d say some small, private ceremony instead of a big lavish wedding sounds like no hardship at all. I’d say I can’t believe I get to live this life.”

Ben’s fingers have gone still in her hair. He watches her with a rapt, tender gaze. 

“What life?” he prompts, just because it makes his head spin a bit and his limbs feel alarmingly light, to hear her talk like this. 

Rey tilts her head back against his thigh, grinning upside down. 

“A life where this giant, idiot Alpha loves me and chose me for his mate.”

He laughs, short and halting and strangely awkward all of a sudden. 

“You say ‘chose’ as if there could ever be anyone else.”

Rey smiles to herself, folding her hands over her stomach. The way their child feels so right inside her - it’s nothing she could ever have imagined, in the darkness of her old life. To be so sure. To be so safe. To be so brave. 

Anything else in the world outside the two of them pales, in comparison to all this. 

“Let’s set the date, Ben. Maybe we can even get a minister to come here.”

Ben immediately shakes his head, curling over her a bit on instinct. 

“No, I’m taking you out in front of the whole world when I marry you. That part has to be right.”

Rey looks up, and finds her mate’s eyes firm with resolution. She reaches up to trace the shape of his cheek, then his jaw. She smiles as she traces his lips. 

“Okay. Just don’t make me wait too long.”

Rey can’t believe they’re doing this. _She can’t believe they’re doing this._

“Ben, I don’t - we’re going to get caught and everything will be ruined…”

“Just trust me. It’s going to be perfect.”

Rey holds his hand in one of hers and her white skirts in the other as they step over rocks littering the path to the lake. He lifts her over a few precarious steps, in her heels.  
They’d driven for about two hours down into England, but Ben remained stubbornly silent to her questions along the way. She’d seen signs for Lake Country and thought Ben had planned some secret destination ceremony. 

Until he parked the car outside a beautiful, stone-walled manor house, where the twinkling blue of a lake shore beckoned and swathes of green mountains painted the horizon. 

There was just one problem, and it seemed to Rey quite a big one: The house was clearly a public hotel, and already booked. The driveway full of cars was plenty indication that this particular wedding getaway scene was already booked, and would likely be overrun with guests of the wedding party. 

But since Rey does trust Ben - ill advised though that may seem at this precise moment in time - she takes his hand and follows him down a path along the side of the house, then down through trees covering the short distance to the lakeside. 

Ben is dressed in an immaculate suit. Crisp yet soft around the edges. He’d tied his bow tie only seconds before they left the car, and Rey knows she’ll need some time to properly appreciate _that_ later. 

For now, she appreciates the vaguely ludicrous yet utterly endearing sight of him dressed so well, cutting such a fine figure as they traipse among leaves and bushes. She wishes they could just stop here and wed in the private canopy of the trees - the sound of the water not far off. 

But Ben evidently has other plans. 

When they emerge at the shore of the lake, they find the dock there already overflowing with people. By the looks of it, two different weddings are already underway in a joint ceremony. Unperturbed, Ben leads them towards the dock. Rey makes a quick silent appeal that Ben’s plan doesn’t involve ruining these poor innocent people’s weddings. 

To her surprise, as they approach a man seated in the last row of one of the parties stands up and hurries towards them. 

“Oh, I’m so glad you two made it! You’re just in time!”

Ben releases Rey’s hand so he can reach out to shake the stranger’s. Ben wears a flawlessly-summoned expression of simultaneous gratitude and contrition. 

“You’re really sure it won’t be a problem? We’re not causing any trouble?” Ben asks, voice a distinct tone higher than usual. 

“None at all!” the man assures immediately. He holds Ben’s hand between both of his own, smiling at Ben and Rey with an expression bordering tearful. “We’re so glad to help.”

Not to be bested by Ben’s acting, Rey plasters on a meek smile she hopes would befit a bride-to-be and pretends away her confusion. 

A murmuring spreads through one, then both wedding parties as more people seem to notice their appearance. Then, a shout comes from the direction of the altar. 

“Is that them? The elopers?”

The man who’d greeted Ben turns with a joyous grin on his face. “It’s them! They made it!”

Cheers and applause break out, and then Ben and Rey are hurried up to the altar by the kind, eager encouragement of a dozen different people. Suddenly the focus of both wedding parties, Rey shows Ben just a bit of the confusion in her eyes. 

“What’s going on?” she whispers to him through a sustained smile. 

Ben just grins, innocent and unabashed, as he helps her up onto the raised altar and takes her hands in his.

“These people are kindly letting us borrow their wedding venue. Just for a moment.”

Ben’s untouchable bubble of delight doesn’t even dent when the pastor leans in and whispers, “I’m sorry… what are your names?”

And just like that, suddenly some hundred people or more watch as Ben and Rey are married to the song of blue waves, below a canopy of mountains. 

A pleasant blush spreads through Rey at the unexpected but no less appreciated audience for their union. She has no idea what scheme or story Ben spun to hijack this ceremony, but the setting is no less splendid for it. The sudden admission into these strangers’ welcome fills some small space within her she didn’t even realize had been empty. Ben gives her so much, provides so much - even a connection to the sentimental normalcy she thought could never be theirs. 

Rey knows it’s fleeting, but she doesn’t care. Today, she gets to be a bride. Out in the sunshine, Rey can only see Ben and this unlikely dream wedding he found a way to give her. She can think of nothing but the warmth of his hands and husband. 

“I do,” Ben says, his smile unlike anything Rey has ever seen before. It’s small but it trembles slightly, as if evidence of an internal struggle to keep too much emotion from leaking out. His features quake as he gazes at her and only her, as if he might be taken apart by the sight of her here, now.

_I do find a better person within me, when I live for you._

__

__

_I do plan to spend each day of the rest of my life cherishing you._

_I do know you’re the one who saved me._

Perhaps a bit too rough, a bit too eagerly - Rey lifts his hand in hers and pushes a gold wedding ring into place on Ben’s finger. He’d produced the rings from an inner pocket of his suit just before the vows began. 

“I do,” Rey says back, trusting Ben understands all the ways she means it. 

_I do trust you to protect me and care for me._

__

__

_I do plan to give you children who will love you as much as I do._

_I do find some blessing in everything that’s happened to me, because it all led me to you._

When they are pronounced husband and wife and permitted to kiss, Rey catches a mischievous, almost gleeful gleam in Ben’s eyes. Before she knows it, Ben pulls her into his arms and dips her back so far, her feet slide off the ground. He bends to kiss her lips, and he is all the gravity she’ll ever need. 

Cheers, applause, and a few wolf whistles burst forth from the two wedding parties filling the dock. Full of benevolent good will from their own wedding ceremonies and just a little gullibility, these strangers shower celebration over the couple who - being so clearly in love - couldn’t possibly be anything but two deserving, virtuous people.

Afterwards, Ben and Rey are quickly surrounded by the two other newly-wed couples, along with a host of bridesmaids and groomsmen. 

“You two simply must join our receptions!”

Ben waves a convincingly humble hand in the air. “No, no, we couldn’t possibly impose any further…”

“Nonsense. Please, we’d be delighted!” 

Before Ben can pretend further protests, one of the other brides folds her arm in Rey’s and starts guiding her towards the manor house, Ben hauled along shortly behind her. 

Rey’s guilt over crashing these people’s weddings is soon eclipsed by her amazement at the guileless generosity of these people - normal, unassuming, almost enviably bland in their lack of secrets or trespasses. 

She looks at Ben across the room, once both parties have filled the house and champagne flutes have been passed around. He’s been corralled into a corner with the groomsmen, a distance away from where Rey stands with the brides and a gaggle of blonde, endlessly smiling bridesmaids. 

From here, Rey can fully appreciate the cut of his suit. The way his broad shoulders strike such a huge, impressive figure, dwarfing the other men around him. The dark tousle of his hair. The way she’d found him already gazing at her - only her - when her eyes focused on him. 

In a room full of gorgeous, privileged people with the good fortune to never have been tainted by the sight of gore, the act of death, or the burden of misdeeds - they still are drawn only to each other. And the way one corner of Ben’s mouth effortlessly overcomes gravity - it proves to her that it’s not as if they’re the only two of a kind; as if their pasts have condemned them to another plane of being where the only real thing they could ever find is the other. 

Rey has considered all that before, but really, it’s not true at all. It is simply that Ben knows her, like no one else ever will. And so he loves her, like no one else ever could. No matter who or what they are, he always would have.

And Rey wouldn’t trade him, not even for the most boring, uneventful, easiest life imaginable. There’s only one man who would kill for her; one man who knows no limits when it comes to protecting his partner and their budding child. That’s the man Rey wants. The one she’s going to keep for her own, forever. 

There are toasts. Ben gets needled by the people around him until he clears his throat and raises his glass in his wife’s direction. 

“To Rey. The love of all my lives. You’re far more than I’ll ever deserve, but now that you’re mine, I’ll hold onto you every day of eternity.”

Two of the bridesmaids around Rey give audible sighs. Rey grins at her husband, warm and light with the truth of how completely he belongs to her. She raises her flute to her lips when everyone else does the same, but keeps her lips closed at the rim of the glass. She idly rests a hand over where Ben’s child grows steadily within her. 

Not long after, Rey gets the whole story. 

“It’s _so_ romantic,” one of the brides - Jennifer - sighs. “How Ben sacrificed his whole family fortune to propose to you, even though his parents wanted him to marry someone else. But then he couldn’t afford to give you your dream wedding here like you always wanted, after his parents cut him off. We just had to help.”

Rey absorbs and recovers from all this markedly quickly. Her instincts haven’t dulled. 

“It’s lovely when you put it that way, but we went through so much,” Rey says, with a dramatic flourish of dabbing at her eyes. “I knew I wanted to spend my life with Ben from the first time I met him, but there was so much in the way…” Jennifer nods along with Rey’s words, eyes wide as she clutches one of Rey’s hands. “I tried to say no to him at first, because I didn’t want him to lose everything because of me, but he was insistent that he’d only ever be happy if we were together. He insisted nothing else mattered. And eventually I realized that he was right.”

“ _So romantic_ ,” Jennifer opines again. 

“Thank you so much for sharing your wedding day with us. I can’t tell you what it means.”

Rey is caught off guard by the weight of the sudden sincerity in her own words. This part is true enough - she can’t imagine any more beautiful complement to her and Ben’s wedding day than a reminder of the world’s capacity for kindness. 

There is dancing, cake, more food. Then when one of the grooms asks Ben how long it will take them to drive home, there comes insistence that they stay the night - there are a few unused rooms, still. 

Late that night, they finally retire to a small but cozy, exquisitely furnished bedroom on the third floor. 

“That was quite a story you told,” Rey says, slumping into one of the cushioned chairs beneath the wide windows. She’s wearing Ben’s cavernous suit jacket over the thin straps of her white dress, and her ankles throb from all the dancing.

Ben smiles as he unclasps his cufflinks, unties his bow tie, and removes his shoes. “It did the trick.”

“How did you do it?”

“Called the hotel first. Told the story. They said they had a booking coming up for a dual wedding, and perhaps I could ask the parties whether they wouldn’t mind fitting in a third. So the hotel gave me their phone numbers, and I cried just a little when I told them the story. I was afraid I might have laid it on a little thick, but seems they were still convinced.”

Rey just titters, tired and glowing and overjoyed to the very tips of her fingers. “You’re so wicked.”

That’s when Ben looks up and straight at her, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone. His smile is languorous and utterly without remorse. 

“Lucky for me, you love me that way.” 

He crosses to kneel before her, where she sits boneless and exhausted in the armchair. His fingers circling her ankle completely, he lifts one of her feet into his lap and begins unbuckling her heeled shoes. Rey sighs in relief as he frees each of her feet from their confines. 

He lifts her leg and bends his head to kiss the inside of each of her calves, then the inside of each knee. His hands slide her white skirts up her thighs, his lips following to map and kiss every inch of revealed skin. 

At the apex of her thighs, he spends an unconscionable amount of time mouthing at her through her underwear. Rey’s fingers shake in his hair, her breathing thin and unsteady as he sucks at the shape of her clit through the silk. He presses his tongue to the fabric until he can taste her, soaking through. 

Rey digs one of her heels into his back, hard. 

“Wicked bastard.”

Ben only hums against her, a low purr of delectation. Slowly, he slides his fingers beneath the silk and peels it down her thighs. He closes his eyes and nuzzles his face against her before spreading her apart with his thumbs.

“My beautiful wife,” he breathes, before taking her clit in his mouth. 

Rey lounges in the chair, head lolling back as she sounds her pleasure. She moves slowly against Ben’s mouth at first, as he sucks her gently and aimlessly - just letting his mouth and his whole being slowly fill up with her. Until his tongue begins working her in a hard, determined rhythm, and she begins to grind against his mouth. 

Finally, Rey feels the pulsation of need take over her entire awareness. 

She cups Ben’s face in her hands and lifts his mouth from her. She sits up, places her feet flat on the floor again and just takes him in where he kneels between her knees. He’s licking his lips, where his mouth and chin are drenched with her. His hands are dizzyingly huge and possessive, where they rest upon her thighs. His eyes are somewhere between dazed and very, very lucid - burning with dark flames Rey can almost feel against her skin already. She shivers with the promise of their scorching touch.

His face still cupped between her hands, Rey leans close. 

“I want you to spread me on that bed and fuck me the way none of those other poor women downstairs are ever going to be fucked in their lives.”

Ben’s lips part to reveal teeth - some mixture of a possessive growl and a smirk of primal satisfaction. 

“You want them to hear you? These nice people who let us crash their wedding?”

“Maybe. Because these nice people think you’re _so romantic_. They think you’re sweet and nice, just like them. But you’re _nothing_ like them, and that’s why I want you like no one else.”

A harsh noise bursting from his chest, Ben strips her, scoops her up from the chair, and spreads her face down on the bed. He tears off the nuisance his suit has now become while he growls at her, “Spread your legs as wide as they’ll go for me. Hips up. Show me that wet, empty hole you need me to fill so badly.”

Ben kneels behind her and strokes appreciative fingers over the swell of her ass. She has her knees propped wide apart, her hips up high in the air already. 

“My good girl,” he murmurs. “All mine.”

Their first shared orgasm releases the blunt, overwhelming overflow of feeling from the day. It’s unrefined, shocking, and unleashed at full-force. Rey comes for the second time with Ben’s hand hot and heavy around her neck from behind and his deep voice affecting her just as much as his cock plunging in and out: “Every inch of you is mine. Mine in every way.” 

When he releases her neck and shifts her hips down so he can fuck at a slower, deeper rhythm, he orders in a deep rumble, “Tell me, Rey. All the ways you’re mine.”

The words tumble out in an excited, joyous rush. “Yours entirely. Your mate for life. Your Omega, since the first time I saw you. Always meant for you. Your wife. Your _wife._ I’m yours, Ben. My whole life.”

His fingers begin circling her clit, and Rey just keeps on talking, the cycle of _mate, omega, wife_ and the effervescent combination of it all pushing her towards her third climax. 

She doesn’t remember moving, but when she comes down, Ben has rearranged them on the bed. He holds her against him now, his body curled around her back as his hips rock a slow, tender rhythm into her cunt. He eases himself inch by inch fully inside her each time, kissing her neck and stroking his fingers across her hips, her stomach, her breasts before he does it again. 

“Rey,” he murmurs right against her ear, and she has to find one of his hands and cling to it, when his voice against her ear hits her at the same moment the head of his cock strokes something sensitive and private inside her - something she wants him to touch and make love to forever, just like this.

“I’ve been yours since the first time I breathed your scent. That first time I touched your skin. I’d been waiting for you, always waiting, even when I didn’t know…”

He slides inside her again, nudging his hips deeper until he feels her gasp and ease open, muscles relaxing to him completely as he holds her close and protected. He fucks in against that spot again and again, breathing hard as his body consumes every offering she gives and repays it with worship. 

“I’m _yours_ , Rey. More than I’ve ever been anything else in my life. You’re all my Alpha ever thinks about. He belongs to you. As does the rest of me. Your mate, always. 

Rey gasps sharply when Ben reaches some new place inside her with a slow twist of his hips. Her muscles spasm, seeking to hold him there in place - to freeze them both within this perfect moment of oneness. 

Her hand squeezes around his with all of her strength. 

He kisses slowly behind her ear, before he vows, “ _Your husband_.”

* * *

“Omega. Stay.”

Rey glares from the bed as Ben bodily blocks the bedroom doorway with his wide frame. She glances under his arm as if contemplating her chances of escaping past him. He tracks her gaze and growls softly in response. 

With a grumbling, theatrical sigh, Rey pulls the covers back over herself and settles back against the nearly dozen pillows Ben has collected for her. 

“You’re domineering and terrible,” she grouses, crossing her arms. “I want a divorce.”

Once he’s convinced she won’t make a run for it, Ben stops blocking the doorway and approaches the bed. He leans down to kiss her forehead, despite how she pouts and pretends to turn her head away. 

“Whatever you say, sweetheart. You can have a divorce after the twins are here.”

Ben straightens suddenly, stiffening into an instinctive protective stance in front of his mate when a ruckus erupts from the hallway. He relaxes a moment later, when it’s only their two-year-old son who crashes through the doorway, banging his favorite bucket toy against the floor as he goes. 

He abandons his toy when he finds his parents, toddling over to the bed and whining with his arms held out until Ben lifts him up into the bed with Rey. 

A beaming smile immediately alights on Rey’s face as she cradles the boy close, her show of indignation forgotten. 

“Were you playing outside, honey?”

The little boy nods with a grin and shows Rey his dirt-covered hands. Ben grumbles his way out and back into the bedroom, returning with a washcloth he promptly uses to clean their son’s hands before he smears dirt all over the bed. 

“Dada, no!” Julian protests, little face scrunching up at the great indignity to which he’s being subjected.

Even as she laughs to herself, Rey nods in a mock agreement. 

“Dada is the worst, isn’t he? He won’t let you stay all dirty. And he won’t let me get out of bed and do a damn thing on my own. The nerve of him, really.”

“Dada isn’t sorry,” Ben says blithely as he scrubs a particularly stubborn patch of dirt from between Julian’s fingers. “Little boys will have clean hands and Mama will stay in bed when she’s nine months pregnant with twins, and if that makes me a monster then so be it. I’ve done worse in my life.”

By this time, Julian has started to giggle while Ben tickles him. Rey shakes her head, failing to keep her grumpy expression from turning fond. 

“How could I have married such a monster?”

Julian squeals and wriggles under Ben’s ruthless tickle attack, until the little boy climbs down and escapes the room.

Before he follows after their son, Ben leans down to his wife with a gleam in his eye. 

“How, indeed?” 

He leans over the bed and kisses her so deeply, Rey’s grateful to be lying down. She can’t help the sigh of contentment when Ben rubs a hand across the giant globe of her belly – his touch always seeming to soothe away every ache. Ben nuzzles his nose against hers for a moment before he pulls back. 

“How are the troublemakers today?”

Rey covers Ben’s hand with one of her own, sliding his hand towards one side of her wide belly. 

“Troublemaker number one keeps kicking here. Must take after you.”

“And number two?” Ben asks, seizing the opportunity to rub across as much of Rey’s pregnant tummy as he can. 

“Seems to be asleep, as per usual. Calm as could be.”

“Hm.” 

Ben’s attention focuses on the swell of Rey’s heavily pregnant stomach, and Rey can already feel the first kindling of his arousal. Nearly towards the end of her second pregnancy, Rey has learned the only thing that pleases her Alpha even more than breeding her is the sight of her body full and huge with his child. 

And now that she’s even _bigger_ this second time, well, sometimes Ben keeps her up at night just because he can’t quite control himself. 

Not that she minds in the slightest. Given her constant aches and pains as the twins approach full-term, Rey likes nothing better than Ben’s deft hands, gentle mouth, then unrelenting cock each taking turns between her legs until she forgets everything except the sweetest, toe-curling pleasure. Her favorite is when he stretches her out on her side and fucks her gently from behind, his hands roving all across her huge belly while he presses loving, filthy murmurings into her neck. 

“Look at you, so big and radiant with my babies inside you. I love seeing you full of me all the time. So beautiful, like you were made to be filled up with my seed.”

Ben constantly finds reasons to touch her – helping her dress and undress, bathing her, carrying her up and down the stairs. Rey can’t deny that it makes every part of her preen with pride and delight, seeing her Alpha drawn to her even more desperately than usual, practically helpless to the allure of her body as she blooms in pregnancy. 

It’s an endless, overwhelming cycle of desire. Carrying their babies inside her makes Rey crave Ben’s touch and intimacy all the more; her ever-inviting pheromones drive him near mad with how sweetly and intensely she responds to him. 

Holding her in bed while they both panted through their considerable comedowns, he’d murmured to her once, “You breed for me so well, mate. Maybe I should keep you like this. Keep fucking babies into you so you’re always this sensitive. Hmm, Omega?”

Except, there’s only one problem with that proposal. 

Ben straightens up from rubbing Rey’s belly when they hear something crash to the floor elsewhere in the house. Rey winces, though neither of them seem particularly distressed by the noise anymore. 

“You’d better go check what our son just broke.”

“I’d better.” Ben presses one more kiss to her lips. “I’ll be back later with dinner.”

Rey resigns herself to permanent occupancy in bed until the twins arrive. She knows Ben will wait on her hand and foot, and the omega side of her has no quarrel at all with that part. 

Burrowed in a nest of blankets and countless pillows, Rey looks up from her book when another crash sounds not long after. She hears Julian start to cry, then the gentle, collected tone of Ben’s voice, and soon thereafter Julian’s cries quieting. She returns to her book, knowing Ben can handle whatever latest destruction wreaked by their son.

An hour or so later, Ben returns to the bedroom with Julian in his arms. The boy is freshly bathed, while half of Ben’s clothes appear wet from errant bath splashes.

“Time to tell Mama goodnight,” Ben says as he brings Julian over to the bed.

Rey holds her arms out to snuggle their little boy close. 

“Good night, honey. Dream nice dreams, okay?” 

Rey strokes fondly through the unruly head of dark hair Julian inherited from his father. The boy giggles when Rey kisses the narrow nose matching her own. 

“Night, Mama!” Julian reaches a small hand down to pat his mother’s tummy. “Night, babies!”

“You’re going to be such a good big brother, aren’t you, Julian?”

The boy grins and nods. “The best big bro-dah.”

Rey gives him one last kiss before Ben scoops Julian up again. 

“Next stop: Bedtime.” 

Ben hefts the boy up high in the air, and Rey hears Julian’s laughter the whole way down the hall to the nursery.

“Rey?”

Rey looks up into the mirror, taken aback by the uncharacteristic waver in Ben’s voice. They’re both still naked and damp from the shower, and Ben seems to have frozen where he stands behind her, arrested mid-way in the act of drying her. 

She’s just entered her third trimester. Carrying their first child, every day is both exciting and terrifying. 

“Yes, Ben?”

Ben lays the towel aside. He comes close behind her, and when he wraps his arms around her to lay his hands over the swell of her belly, it feels different than the countless times he’s done it before. She realizes with a start that his hands are trembling a little, his touch filled with timidity rather than the hunger or awe he often touches her with.

When Rey looks in the mirror, she sees his gaze fixed downwards, glued to the sight of his wide hands spanning her belly. But it’s not the fond fascination or primal satisfaction she usually sees on his face, when he touches where their child grows inside her. Instead, it’s an expression of uncertainty and unease like she’s never seen him wear before. 

For a moment, it makes fear unfold within her. 

“Mate,” Ben whispers, words half hidden in her wet hair. “I know I was meant for you and only you. But I… I’m not always so sure I was meant for this.”

His thumb traces across her belly button, dipping lightly in and out. 

Against her back, his body feels tense – strong and broad as it’s ever been, but only just barely held together. 

“Giving you a family feels right, Rey. Seeing you like this – touching you like this… it’s just… it’s more than I ever thought I would have in this life.” 

His hand skims across the top of her belly, and in the mirror his expression seems dangerously near shattering.

“I want to give you everything, mate. Usually, I know in my bones what you want or what you need. But our children… how will I know what they need? How can I be what they need? How can I do right by this new life, when for so long all I knew was taking life away?”

Rey remains silent for a long moment, letting the blunt honesty and rare fear in Ben’s confession sink in. Even still, his complete trust in her makes her chest feel too full. It makes her feel powerful and cherished, when he lets her take care of him too. 

She catches his hands in hers before he can withdraw them – before he can misconstrue her silence for something other than overwhelming tenderness.

Her fingers laced between his, Rey pulls his arms tighter around herself. She nestles herself back against him until they’re pressed together completely. 

“Listen to me, Ben. The same way I know that we were meant for each other, I know that you were meant for this. All of this.”

She guides one of his hands to rest against her breast, over her heart. His other she guides back to the shape of her pregnant stomach. 

“It’s all because of you. Only you. It’s because of you that I can sleep soundly at night, knowing I’m safe and loved and protected. It’s because of you that I wanted this child. Your child. Ours.”

Rey laces her fingers between her mate’s and takes a deep breath to speak words with equal weight. 

“Once, I would never have thought I was suited for this either. After all I was forced to be a part of in the syndicate… I was abducted, but still, every decision I made after that day was my own. Every day I remained complicit because I thought it would keep me safe… those are choices I have to live with. And when I knew nothing else, when I thought that would define me forever… I couldn’t have ever imagined bringing new life into a world I thought was only cruel and heartless.”

Rey turns her head, pressing her face against Ben’s neck to breathe in the grounding reassurance of his scent. The scent that first made her see something other than shadow. 

“Then I met you, Ben. And everything changed. A part of me I thought was dead burst to life again. I felt like there was finally something to fight for. That I was worth fighting for. That there could be more for me in the world than just the miserable minimum of survival.”

Rey can’t look up into the mirror quite yet to see his face. She focuses on just the sight of her own fingers folded between Ben’s larger ones atop her stomach. She thinks only of how warm he always is – how tightly his hands always hold her. 

“So you’re not just giving me a family because you think that’s what every woman or every omega would want. For a long time, I didn’t. _You_ changed that. The love you inspire in me is what made me want to create new life - to raise and nurture it as our own. Because it would have to be yours, Ben. Only you could make me so sure that the world I bring a child into will be a good one.”

When Rey finally, slowly looks up, Ben has his face hidden against her hair. His hands release hers and move from her stomach in favor of wrapping tight around her shoulders, pulling her back even closer against him.

Against her back, he breathes in deep, incredulous bursts. 

“You never told me all that,” he whispers. 

Rey wraps her hands around one of his bare forearms. 

“I don’t really like remembering who I was before you,” she murmurs.

Ben lets out a small, amazed breath, then a single wry laugh. “Nor I.”

He lifts his head just enough so Rey can see that his eyes are wet. Rey curls her hand a bit tighter against his arm, smiling a fond, teasing smile for him.

“Just what did you think I was talking about, all the times I tell you I love you? Did you really think that I would have felt this way for just anyone who came after the syndicate?”

Ben shakes his head, his eyes finally finding Rey’s in the mirror. Though still wet, his gaze is more firm now, more resolute and understanding.

“No. I’m the only one meant for you, Rey.” His tight grip on her shoulders silently speaks the counterpart: _Just as you’re meant for me._

“Exactly,” Rey affirms, smiling at her mate in the mirror. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have ever wanted to escape. I wouldn’t have believed that I could ever be happy. That I _deserve_ to be happy.”

Finally, Rey turns in his arms so she can press a kiss to the corner of Ben’s mouth. She reaches up to cup his cheek, stroking her thumb across his jaw until he’s fully there with her in understanding – body, mind, and soul.

“That’s how I know, Ben. I know you’re meant to have a family with me. And I know you’re going to be perfect.”

After putting Julian to bed, Ben returns with Rey’s dinner. 

“Is the little monster asleep?”

“For now.”

Rey eyes the tray in Ben’s hands, eyebrow quirking with a scoff. 

“Really, Ben? I can’t even eat at the table?”

“Really, Rey. You’re staying right there.”

Rey sits up, moving some pillows aside in expectation of Ben handing her the tray. Instead, he sits beside her in bed and keeps the tray in his own lap. Rey watches as he picks up the utensils and begins cutting her dinner for her. 

His voice comes in a deep, hypnotic rumble. “You’re going to be a good girl and let Alpha feed you.”

Rey’s mouth immediately opens in protest because this is ridiculous, he’s being _ridiculous_ … But her traitorous omega side delays her objections, just long enough for Ben to slide the first bite of vegetable lasagna into her mouth. 

“That’s a good girl,” he praises, voice low and soothing. He strokes a fingertip along her lower lip once as she chews before he brings the next bite to her mouth. Rey tells herself she’s going to voice her objection this time, but Ben is faster. The second bite’s already past her lips and oh, perhaps it’s just easier like this, letting her Alpha have his way. 

Perhaps it’s a little sweet, even - she finds herself thinking by the fifth, sixth bite. 

Rey finally relaxes, leaning back in the pillows again as Ben feeds her dinner. He murmurs praise and endearments to her between each bite. 

“You’re being so good – letting me nourish my omega so our babies can keep growing big and strong inside you. You’re doing such a good job, taking care of them until they’re ready to come out. I’m going to take good care of you, make sure your body has everything it needs.”

Rey hums in contentment between bites, smiling at him lazily. Already, she feels herself slipping into the pliant, eager headspace that takes her over, whenever Ben whispers to her in that deep, intimate alpha husk.

With Rey so heavily pregnant, Ben’s utter absorption in her extends even to the level of her bodily functions - the intimate, the maternal, even the routine. He makes himself responsible for all, and in her state of heightened sensitivity and emotional vulnerability, everything from Ben feeding her to bathing her to pleasuring her makes her want to put herself even deeper into his loving, competent hands. 

It makes her want him close in every conceivable way. Trusting him with her body all the time - to provide for her needs on even unspoken levels - brings her joy on a level difficult to express.

 _Alpha provides for me and our babies so well,_ a voice inside her never stops singing. _He gives us everything._

After feeding her the last bite, Ben wipes the corners of her lips with a wide thumb. Rey sighs in content, her thoughts growing pleasantly hazy as she curls herself against his side. Just his presence, just the warmth of his attentiveness and the brush of his fingers against her mouth, it’s enough to ease the aches of bearing two fully formed infants nearly ready to enter the world. 

“Mate,” Rey hums as one of Ben’s huge hands begins rubbing circles over her stomach. 

“Does it feel good, Rey?” Ben murmurs, his breath and words hot against her forehead. “Does it feel good when I touch where my babies grow inside you?”

Her eyes closed, every muscle in her body relaxing, Rey lets her head go limp against the support of Ben’s shoulder. “Yes, Ben. It feels so warm. Your babies love when you’re so close. I can feel how happy it makes them.”

A deep rumble begins in Ben’s chest, like the quiet purr of some deadly beast. After pushing the tray aside, Ben slides his arms around Rey and draws her into his lap. 

One hand still spread across her stomach while his other holds her against his chest, he nuzzles along the curve of her neck until he reaches her mating mark. He presses slow, wet kisses to it. 

“Not as happy as it makes me – sensing them inside you. Seeing how you glow, when you’re so full of our children.” He slides his teeth slowly across her mating mark, savoring how she trembles in his arms. “I can’t tell you what it does to me, Rey,” he breathes, shallow and unsteady against her skin. “Looking at you everyday and seeing how completely you belong to me.”

His hands both roam to her stomach now, cupping the considerably swelled shape of it between his hands.

“How you let me impregnate you twice at the same time. How your body drank up so much of my seed that it made twins. _Two_ babies to please your Alpha.”

“Ben,” Rey gasps, writhing in his lap. “I’ll give you as many babies as will make you happy. I love everything about it – even when it hurts towards the end. Keep me fucked full of babies all the time, if it pleases you. You can do whatever you want with me – with my cunt, with my womb. It’s all yours, Alpha.”

Rey whines, soft and pitiful as Ben bites gently at her earlobe, then soothes the sting away with his tongue. He’s breathing hard, trying to keep some semblance of control even as her words set his alpha blood raging. 

Despite how the sight of her pregnant body so inflames his need for her, he knows she’s fragile right now. Despite all their talk, he won’t be anything but gentle with her when she’s in this state.

He kisses slowly down the side of her face as he slides a hand beneath the round swell of her tummy. His fingers descend until they slide through her folds, teasing her clit in slow circles. 

A choked sound lodges in Rey’s throat, her head tipping back further on Ben’s shoulder. He bends his head to kiss along the exposed column of her throat, nipping at the sensitive skin while his fingers slip inside of her. 

“Does it feel good, mate?” he murmurs as he pumps two fingers all the way in and out of her. He can’t help himself from biting her shoulder when he slides a third finger in. So heavily pregnant, she’s dripping wet and gaping wide. Ben reels in the mad urge to try fitting his whole hand inside her. 

Instead, he curls three fingers deep inside her wet heat and rasps, “Does it feel good? When I touch where I bred you?”

Rey’s muscles flutter around him as her breathing hitches still higher, still more strained.

“Yes. Yes, Alpha. It feels right.” Ben presses his lips to her neck again, leaving bite marks then kissing them away. “I was made for you to breed. Made to always carry part of you inside me.”

His free hand comes to one of her breasts, and he can’t help groaning when he feels how heavy it is in his hand. His thumb teases her nipple while his palm kneads the swollen swell of her.

She makes a low, startled sound, and suddenly Ben’s hand is wet. His other hand stills between her legs as he looks up from her neck, stunned. His voice emerges faint.

“Darling. Was that…?”

Rey only whines, writhing in his lap as she nods. 

“It came in a little while ago already.”

Ben’s heart pounds as he remembers the period when Rey breastfed Julian. She was so very sensitive, and when she grew uncomfortable because there seemed to be too much milk, she would come to Ben and ask him to give her relief…

“Rey,” Ben breathes, clinging to the edges of control. His fingers are still frozen, where they’re buried inside her. “Tell me, are you too sensitive right now?”

Rey quickly shakes her head. “No, I… I want your mouth on me.”

Then, he lets his control snap. He pushes Rey to her back on the bed, stretches out over her, and takes one of her breasts hungrily in his mouth. She moans above him as he kneads her with his fingers, sucking at her until the milk begins trickling out again. 

“Fuck,” Ben breathes, all but panting for breath when he releases her nipple to lap up a few errant drops from the underside of her breast. _“Fuck.”_

While he closes his lips around her nipple again to suck at the milk beginning to flow from her, he reaches down to return his fingers between her legs, stroking against her clit while his mouth milks her breast. 

Rey pants beneath him, her thighs starting to tremble and the rest of her quickly following suit. Her hands reach for him and sink into his hair, cradling him against her and pulling him just a little bit closer.

“Mate,” she mewls, loud and unabashed. Her fingers shake in his hair as he draws and gives pleasure in equal measure – his suckling mouth and the relentless rhythm of his fingers against her, then inside her, all trapping her in between. Sensations wear her away from all sides until – 

Ben only releases her nipple from his lips when he feels wetness of a different kind course against his hand. He licks his lips before he grins at her, roguish and deeply satisfied. 

“Fucking love how you squirt, when you’re so pregnant.”

Rey moves slowly as she catches her breath, reaching out to stroke Ben’s hair from his forehead. She bites her lip.

“Will you clean me up? Drink what my body makes down there, too?”

“ _Rey_ ,” he bites out, eyes flashing dangerously. 

It takes a bit of maneuvering, to get his head fully between her thighs when her belly’s as big as it is. But Ben always manages it. He kisses and laps at her until her aftershocks ease into a kind of gentle bonfire, warming her from head to toe.

Ben takes his time, just kissing between her legs and the apex of her thighs until Rey catches her breath. His hands smooth up over her round belly, then back to her breasts, wiping away a few last droplets from her nipples. Rey loves watching them - loves seeing the way his giant hands can enclose her tits completely.

There’s a pout on Rey’s face when Ben crawls back up her body. She eyes his untended erection and reaches for him, despite how her belly constricts her movement. 

Ben gently bats her hand away, folding her into his arms instead and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. 

“Don’t worry, Rey. I’m _very_ satisfied.”

Rey immediately curls closer against her mate, nuzzling into his shoulder. A soft noise of content rises from her when one of Ben’s hands cups her breast again, fingertips stroking the soft skin. She knows he’s even more drawn to them, when she’s producing milk for his children. 

Rey presses sleepy, contented kisses to Ben’s jaw as she murmurs, “With twins, I expect I’ll make quite a lot.”

That primal, rumbling sound rises from Ben’s chest again – the noise that soothes his mate, but would terrify anyone else. 

With his other hand, he cups the back of her head to hold her even closer against him. 

“Enough for me, too?” he asks in a low husk. 

Rey nods a little, sleep and safety already enveloping her. She finds one of his hands and folds it close against her chest.

“Think so. Enough for all my loves.”

* * *

It worried Rey at first, when Julian didn’t feed much as a newborn. He latched fine, but he never seemed to drink for more than ten minutes or so at a time.

Ben called the doctor. Once Rey explained their habits and how many times a day she let the baby nurse, she was assured not to worry. With so many feeding sessions, it didn’t matter that they were short. 

Only then, Rey had another problem. Her body still seemed to want to feed the baby more, and her breasts wouldn’t stop leaking. 

She read up on possible solutions, but she didn’t want to just pump the milk – she knew she’d never feed Julian from a bottle. Neither did she want to just drain it out; that seemed a waste. 

She had an inkling of a solution. The thought had filled her with a strange, illicit desire when it first came to her, but for a while, she wasn’t quite ready to ask.

It wasn’t precisely that she was shy or scared to ask Ben – she knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. It was perhaps more that she was nervous he might not enjoy it as much as she imagines she would. She finds herself aroused by the mere thought, and hopes he won’t think it strange – that the idea of sharing her milk with him excites her in a way she’s never quite felt before.

One night, Ben cradles her loosely in bed while she in turn holds their month-old son, nursing and rocking him. Rey is too fixated on the baby to notice how raptly Ben watches where Julian nurses from her. She strokes her fingers along the baby’s head, murmuring to him until he falls asleep, her nipple slipping free of his tiny mouth. 

At her side, Ben moves to sit up. “I’ll take him,” he whispers. 

Rey shakes her head. “He’ll wake. I’ll carry him to bed.”

Julian bundled in her arms, Rey clambers slowly from bed. She carries the baby to the next room, lying him down carefully in his crib. She winces slightly as she straightens, her engorged breasts aching. Julian had hardly nursed at all before he fell asleep.

Tonight. She’s going to ask tonight. 

Returning to the bedroom, Rey distantly wishes she could put on something lacy and skimpy for her mate. She’s hardly spared a thought for her appearance since the baby arrived, but now she suddenly wishes she had the time. 

They haven’t had sex since the baby’s arrival. They’d gone longer than a month while Ben traveled for jobs, but since he gave up his old occupation, they rarely went even a day without. But Ben has given her space since Julian’s birth, never saying a word on the matter or even trying to touch her intimately. She senses he doesn’t want to rush her, but Rey has grown more and more sure. She wants him close again - as close as she can have him.

Then she enters the bedroom, sees Ben look up at her where he’s sprawled in their bed, and stops worrying about stupid lingerie. Even when she’s just dressed in cotton sleep pants and a t-shirt, his eyes grow wide and warm when he sees her.

“He stayed asleep?”

Rey nods, “Mmhm” and bites her bottom lip. 

“Ben? Can I… um, can I ask you for something?”

Ben turns onto his side, facing her with more focus in his expression. He seems surprised and slightly concerned. Rey rarely has to voice her needs or desires to him; he usually simply senses them first. 

“What is it?”

“I….” Rey pauses to hook a hand beneath the hem of her night shirt. With a deep breath, she pulls it off over her head, leaving her bare from the waist up. She looks down at herself as she cups a hand over one breast, where a few beads of liquid gather at the nipple. She winces slightly at the brush of her hand against her tender skin. 

Across the room, Ben watches her with a heated, laser-sharp gaze.

“Julian isn’t nursing as much as my body’s producing. I’ve been having a lot of discomfort lately, and you know I’ve been dealing with leakage. So I… had an idea that might help. I… I was wondering if… maybe…” 

Rey looks down to the floor, biting her lip again as her awareness of the request’s unorthodoxy makes her flush. The twists of excitement and arousal in her belly turn anxious. Staring at the floor rather than at Ben, she forces herself to say it. 

“Maybe you could help me?”

Rey prays he’ll know what she means. She holds her breath as she hears his sharp intake of breath, then a long moment of silence from her husband. 

After what feels an eternity, Ben’s voice sounds in a quiet tone of authority. An unmistakable Alpha command that nearly makes Rey moan on the spot with the rush of stimulation the sound sends through her. It’s been far too long since she heard it. 

“Omega. Look at me.”

Rey does. Ben is sitting up on the bed, his gaze so dark it’s nearly black and attention so single-minded; she feels she might spark into a conflagration just from the heat of his attention. 

She loves it. She realizes suddenly how desperately she craved her Alpha’s nearly animalistic fixation. How deeply she’d missed the intensity of their physical connection. 

She lets her hand fall from her chest – no longer self-conscious of how her nipples appear a bit swollen, or the droplets leaking from one. She watches Ben’s gaze dart down to where the milk drips from her. She watches him fist the sheets and lick his lips. 

She loves him more than she can contain.

“Take off the rest,” he commands. 

Nodding, Rey hurries to obey. Once she stands there completely naked, she watches Ben eagerly. He makes no move to undress himself, just beckons her to him with a curl of his finger.

“Come here, mate. On top of me.”

Ben sits back against the pillows, stretching his legs out so Rey can straddle him. She moves quickly to comply, crawling onto the bed then placing her knees down on either side of Ben’s waist, her hands on his shoulders. Call her crazy but it already feels good – just being this near him without her giant, pregnant tummy between them. 

Ben trails his fingers slowly along her calves, then up her thighs. Rey tries to stop herself from trembling as his fingers skim up over her hips, then finally, _finally_ settle at her chest. He moves an arm to hook around the small of her back, drawing her closer against him while his other hand cups one of her tender breasts with all the gentle reverence he can find in him. 

He dips his head, pressing a soft kiss to Rey’s sensitive skin. She already has to bite back a moan, even though his mouth isn’t near either nipple yet. 

Ben turns his head to kiss her other breast, his lips mouthing a soft, careful shape against her skin. 

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me.”

Rey’s mouth falls open a little. 

“You… have?”

“Yes.” He kisses his way slowly between her tits, the warm brush of his breath and lips against her sensitive skin making her feel weightless. “Of course I want to taste the milk my omega makes for our child.”

“Ben,” Rey breathes, the sudden force of this new desire seizing her without mercy. _“Please…”_

Ben cups a wide hand carefully around one of her leaking breasts. His expression is riveted with awe as he trails a thumb along her areola, just barely brushing her engorged nipple. 

“Tell me if anything hurts, okay?” he murmurs, voice strained and gravely. “Or if I’m taking too much.”

Rey nods weakly, unable to rein in the whimper of need – the sound of abject begging that escapes her mouth, until…

One hand at the small of her back to hold her to him and his other cupped beneath her breast, Ben seals his lips to her nipple and begins to suck. Rey groans in relief, followed by a sharp gasp of surprise at the hot flash of arousal surging through her. She fists a hand in Ben’s hair as she feels the painful surplus of milk finally flowing free, rushing into her mate’s eager, suckling mouth.

Rey’s milk courses over his tongue like it was waiting for him. He makes a soft, indistinct noise of wonder - his mate’s milk sweet, pure, and holy as he drinks it down. He forces himself to remember restraint – his fingers careful as he gently massages her breast to help it release and empty. 

Ben tugs her closer, bringing her nipple deeper into his mouth as her milk flows, warm and heavenly. His eyes slipping shut, the taste of her seems to buoy and fill him completely – each swallow tugging him towards some nirvana where only they two exist. Just him, Rey, and an eternal promise of peace. 

Rey feels herself relaxing at the familiar, soothing feel of nursing – except that Julian never nursed with lips strong like this, nor with suction enough to make her milk flow freely. It’s at once like a weight being eased and glowing embers coming alight within her. She relaxes completely into Ben’s body and the strength of him holding her in place, releasing a grateful gasp as he sucks her still deeper. 

The raw bloom of connection that comes with the act twists and weaves its way all throughout Rey’s body in a tingling rush, making her sink both hands into Ben’s hair as she murmurs to him in an almost senseless stream of adoration, “That’s it, that’s right. Drink everything, my love. I made it for your baby but I want you to share it too. Want to keep you safe and full and healthy with what my body made…”

Ben groans softly around the breast in his mouth, massaging a bit more firmly until it empties. 

“Rey,” he murmurs – amazed and drowsy and aroused all at once as he kisses his way to her other nipple, sucking it hungrily into his mouth. 

A deep, rumbling noise of rapture rises from him as he tugs her closer in his lap, her legs opening all the way to fit him between as he drinks sweet, sublime nourishment from her. His mouth latched tight and loving as he relieves her of all that pent-up ache, filling her with wonder and worship instead, Rey strokes his hair and whispers, “Mate. My mate. Everything my body makes is yours.”

By the time he’s nearly emptied the second breast, Ben feels Rey grinding herself against where she straddles him. Ben releases a strangled moan, massaging her a bit more firmly as he swirls his tongue around her nipple, making sure he empties her thoroughly. 

His brain has trouble focusing through the haze of contentment and security from the act of nursing. It’s as if Rey guided him to some secret sanctuary where only they exist, and any hardship lies outside the bounds of possibility. His thoughts circle in lethargic jumbles: _Omega gives us everything. She makes a whole new world just for us._

“Rey,” Ben whispers, voice stunned and floating once his lips lift from her nipple. He kisses the inside of her breast as his hands slowly slide down to cup her waist. 

_Goddesses should be worshipped_ , his brain purrs. 

“Ben,” Rey breathes into his hair, where she clutches him close against her chest. “ _Ben._ Love, I’m ready.”

His mind blissfully blank, wiped clean of everything except this single inspired purpose, Ben tightens his grip on her to lift her slightly in his lap. His body was made for this - to lift and maneuver her so she never has to strain herself. So her body can rest, doing nothing but receiving pleasure. 

He pushes down his waistband and adjusts himself, then settles her down in his lap again without a single empty bit of space inside her. He kisses the underside of her jaw, then her lips as she gasps and whimpers through the feeling of being so thoroughly opened up by him. Every moment she sits astride him, she sinks deeper around him. Even without him moving at all, just the strain of his size and girth after all this time makes everything inside her shudder and quiver. Makes her inner muscles pulse in equal parts shock and rapture.

How did she survive without this for a whole month? 

“Yes. Made for holding your cock, Alpha,” she groans out as she spreads her thighs to get him that little bit deeper. Her mouth falls open in glorious effort. There always seems to be more of him. “This is how I’m meant to be.”

A noise of pure awe tearing from his chest, Ben grips her waist. He watches her face, savoring every tiny moment of ecstasy and wonder as he lifts her up, up, then steadily back down, down, _down_ until he’s grinding up into her, with nowhere left to go inside her except that spot he knows unravels her completely. 

When the head of his cock sparks against it - so deep inside her it’s a place without even a name - Rey shouts out, senseless and carnal and incomparable.

Every muscle and drop of focus in Ben’s body fixes upon that spot. He moves her atop him as if his compulsion to satisfy his mate overpowers gravity. He embeds himself deeper and deeper inside her, imprinting himself against that single divine secret within her to make sure it will ever be molded to the shape of him. He lowers her down faster and harder until her cries become one long, exalting noise. 

_“This_ is how you’re meant to be,” he declares. 

Her body seizes up when she comes, the overflowing burst of sensation seeming to lodge in her throat as she gasps for air. Her cunt locks so tight around him, it forces him to completion along with her. She takes a deep, shuddering breath of delight, finally able to breathe again as she feels his spend claiming and branding the deepest parts of her. As she feels him shaking apart, then weaving himself back together with her braided inbetween. 

Rey hadn’t noticed one of her breasts had begun to leak again, almost like her body needed to somehow expel the overflow within her. 

Ben notices. With a low swear because this might finally be what kills him, he cranes his head down to take her nipple in his lips and drink it all away. 

Rey gasps, hot and shocked and pleased beyond all measure. Somewhere deep inside her, her body drinks in her mate’s cum. At the same time, his mouth drinks the milk from own body. 

A perfect cycle. An exchange of their very selves that makes them as unified as two can ever be.

Some immeasurable time later, Rey catches her breath on her back with Ben curled at her side. She strokes his hair as he nuzzles her neck. 

He brings a hand to one of her breasts, cupping it lightly as his thumb trails across her nipple with slow appreciation. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, the two words full of amazement, tinged with something near disbelief. He kisses beneath her ear and breathes in her scent as if trying to assure himself of something. 

“Thank you,” he whispers to her again, thinking of a great many things he’ll never be able to capture in mere crude language.

Rey rolls onto her side to face him, fitting herself in more closely beneath his chin and against his chest. She kisses over his heart, one of her arms slung over him. 

“Am I right to assume you’re happy to keep helping me, if Julian’s not drinking enough?”

Ben chuckles low in his throat as he folds her close in his arms. 

“Oh, mate. Very, _very_ happy.”

It’s probably the happiest existence Ben can imagine. Hell, it’s way past his capacity to imagine at all. 

Their son keeps him and Rey busy the whole day long - chasing after him, playing with him, keeping him fed and clean, stopping him from his habit of breaking everything his little hands can reach. 

“Something funny, Rey?” 

Ben had been helping Julian fingerpaint. Until, before his father could stop him, the eight-month-old had discovered Ben’s face made just as good a canvas as his paper. 

Rey bites her lip, desperately trying to repress laughter as Julian slaps a handful of green paint on Ben’s cheek. The baby giggles in delight at his handiwork. 

“No, nothing funny here,” she says before going to fetch all the washcloths she can find. “You look even more handsome than usual, that’s all.”

Most nights, they sit together in the nursery while Rey feeds Julian. He seems to be weaning off breast milk little by little, but she still wants to maintain the bond with her baby for as long as he keeps drinking. 

Once the baby falls asleep, they put him to bed together and retire to their own bedroom. 

Rey strips her clothes off before lying back in the pillows. Ben joins her, kissing her while his attentive hands cup her breasts. Then he’ll shift down her body, a hand beneath her at the small of her back as he relieves her of whatever milk their son left behind. 

Rey will sigh in blissful euphoria, stroking her husband’s hair as he kisses her chest and sucks the milk from her breasts. He’ll stroke circles around where his lips seal to her nipple. Sometimes, he’ll sigh her name in wondrous relief as he lifts his head and licks her milk from his lips. He’ll kiss and lap at her nipples as if what he drinks there is nothing short of divine. 

When their twins are born two years later, they rejoice in doing it all again.

* * *

Ben jolts up in bed, alert in an instant as the sound of an explosion outside dissipates in the air. Rey blinks in confusion as she peers around the dim bedroom. A second explosion sounds, followed by the flash of colored lights through the curtains. 

Rey rests a hand on Ben’s rigid back. 

“It’s just fireworks, baby.”

Ben doesn’t move, just staring at the window as a third and fourth firework goes off. 

“I’m getting Julian,” he says, jaw tense. 

Their little boy hasn’t started to cry, so it seems the fireworks haven’t woken him up. But Rey can’t help smiling to herself a little as Ben goes to fetch the baby anyway. Just to have him there, where they can see him and hold him. 

Julian babbles sleepily as Ben returns to bed with him. He sets Julian in the bed between them. With one of Rey’s hands resting over his tummy and Ben close on his other side, the baby seems unbothered by the strange noises outside. He yawns widely and closes his eyes again. 

Ben lays an arm across his family, lying awake as he watches his wife and son slip back into slumber. He lies awake until long after the fireworks stop, just to assure himself they’re here and safe. 

He traces the curve of Julian’s small, delicate head. Touches Rey’s hair, where it’s splayed across the pillow.

Maybe, just to assure himself they’re real.

* * *

“Right, I’m off!”

Ben looks up when Rey comes into the kitchen, eyes done up, a skirt hugging her thighs, and heels on her feet. He floats towards her immediately, metal to the force of her magnetism. He cups her waist between his hands and bends to rub his nose against her neck. 

“You’re going to meet… what are their names again?”

Rey laughs, hands on his shoulders but putting no real effort into pushing him away, before his wandering hands crumple her skirt. 

“Jennifer and Mary.”

“Right.”

Ben will doubtless forget again, seeing as his attention is currently fixed on Rey’s mating mark. Rey accidentally tugs Ben a bit closer against her neck when she definitely meant to push him back. 

“They’re a little dull, but it is entertaining, listening to their gossip and chat about the _most_ inane things.”

Ben breathes a laugh against her skin, but he is glad for it - that Rey has the option to see the friends she made at their wedding, no matter how silly they may be. 

“Oh, and they’ll ask about you, like they always do.”

“Me?” Ben asks, mouth at Rey’s pulse point. 

“Mmm. They’re both kind of enamored with you, but they’ll never admit it.”

“Really.”

“Women can tell, which man is the strongest in the room.”

Ben releases a soft, pleased growl just against her ear.

Her pulse always twisting in excitement when the feral side of Ben’s Alpha emerges for her, Rey goads him a little more, “They were complaining once about how their honeymoon sex hadn’t been all that great. I just couldn’t relate.”

Ben’s hands slide fully beneath her skirt now, his wide palms cupping and squeezing the swell of her ass.

Rey glances at the clock, calculating how much time she has to make the train. 

“Is Julian still down for his nap?” Ben nods against her neck. “In that case…”

Rey leans back against the kitchen counter, letting her thighs part and tugging Ben close between them. She rubs a hand in circles across his wide chest, just the way she knows always riles him up. 

She bites his bottom lip before murmuring, “Then make me come in the next five minutes, and I’ll go meet my friends glowing from what my strong, powerful Alpha did to me just before.”

Ben hurriedly takes his turn at her mouth, sucking her bottom lip between his and working his teeth against it. His hips are already grinding hard against her, his hands lifting her thighs up to either side of his waist.

“You’re going to be late, baby,” he growls. They both know he can make her come that quickly; the question is whether he’ll be able to let her stop coming.

Rey kisses his mouth full-on and hungrily. 

“Don’t care. I’d rather take the next train and go fucked full of your cum.”

 _“Omega…_ ”

Rey arrives twenty minutes late, but Jennifer and Mary don’t seem to mind. 

“Rey, you’re _glowing_! Spill spill, what’s your latest skin care regimen?!”

* * *

“What is it, Ben?” 

Rey’s hands rub absent-minded circles over her huge tummy where she lays on the couch. She’s less than a week away from the twins’ expected delivery date. 

Ben lays on the floor with Julian, helping him build a Lego tower. He didn’t realize the agitated tilt of his thoughts had been visible on his face, but then again, Rey knows his every tell and habit by now. 

He debates a lie - sparing her another thing to worry about when her body is already so strained. But he knows Rey hates when he does that, so he tells the truth. 

“I’m worried about the doctor. Whether we can trust him again.”

Rey’s brow furrows. “Dr. Roberts? I had a good experience with Julian thanks to him. I thought you liked him too.”

“I agree he did his job well, and he gave you the best care. But hiring him for a second house call… he’s learning a lot about us. And you know childbirths are what any lingering Syndicate filth out there would be most interested in.”

“Hmm…” Rey muses, still rubbing her hands across her belly. “We paid him well, right?”

“ _Very_ well. But money doesn’t buy every man’s silence.”

“Did you say anything to him last time?”

“No, but this time I might.”

With a misplaced block, Julian gasps as his whole tower crumbles to the floor. The two-year-old places blocks in Ben’s hands. 

“Dada, you start!”

“Okay, okay, little buddy.”

Rey watches, smiling to herself as Ben begins the foundation of a new tower and Julian hands him blocks in his favorite colors.

“Just don’t scare him too much,” she finally says. “In case we need to call him again.”

After a grueling fifteen hours of labor, Rey gives birth to two healthy twins: A boy and a girl. Rey is near faint with exhaustion, but she smiles her brightest smile, a few tears leaking out from the corners of her eyes as Dr. Roberts places the girl in her arms and hands the boy to Ben. 

“Look, Julian,” Ben whispers, smiling so much his face hurts. “It’s your baby brother.” The two year old peers into the tiny face with a rapt, wondrous expression. When the tiny boy starts fussing, Ben brings the baby to Rey to nurse. Wanting to give her peace to rest with the new babies, Ben urges the doctor from the room with him, bringing Julian along by the hand. 

Ben asks questions about how to look after Rey in the days following. He listens to the doctor’s instructions with close attention and thanks him sincerely. Finally, he retrieves an envelope filled with cash from a kitchen drawer and hands it to the man. 

“Just one moment, if you don’t mind…” Ben starts, then pauses as he looks down at Julian, who’s still holding Ben’s hand in the presence of this stranger. “Julian, could you go check on Mama? I’ll be right there.” Looking up at him, Julian nods before going off on his errand. 

“One last thing before you go,” Ben says, and a sudden chill in his voice makes the doctor stiffen where he stands. “Now that we’ve hired you twice, it’s possible that people might contact you with questions about us. Perhaps this already happened, after the first time?”

The doctor hurriedly shakes his head. “No, nothing like that.”

“That’s good. I hope it stays that way. But in case someone does - in case you receive any questions about us: I would advise you to pretend you’ve never heard of either me or my wife.” Ben takes a small step closer, eyes boring into the other man’s as Ben towers over him. “If you value your life.”

“I-I will,” the doctor rushes to assure him. “You and your wife don’t have to worry.”

“Good. Then, feel free to take your leave and thank you again.”

After he watches the doctor’s car retreat down the driveway and the gate close after him, Ben returns to the bedroom where Rey nurses a newborn twin at each breast. Julian has tucked himself up next to her, watching the babies with wide eyes. 

“The doctor left?”

“Yes. I got instructions for your care before he went.” 

Ben comes to sit at Rey’s other side, taking in the sight of their little twins with no small amount of awe in his expression. Rey shifts a little, so Ben can lodge an arm beneath her shoulders and hold her against his side. 

“Did you talk to him about the other thing?”

Ben nods. He strokes Rey’s sweaty hair from her face and kisses her forehead. 

“It’s all taken care of.”

* * *

“How many do you think?”

Their bedroom is dim, their breathing heavy as they lie tangled together. The house is filled with a rare quiet - Julian in bed and the three-month-old twins both blessedly asleep. It had taken Rey a while to feel ready for sex again after the twins’ birth, but the wait had only made her more hungry for Ben than ever. 

Reacting to her question, Ben just smiles lazily into her hair and slips a hand between her legs, dipping into the wetness of his own seed there. 

“Rey. You can’t ask me that,” he kisses her ear as he says it, the words bleary with affection. 

Smiling as she rolls closer to him, she lets her thighs part a bit wider to his touch as she reaches up to tangle a hand in his hair. 

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

He swirls a finger in his cum as it leaks out of her and presses it slowly back inside. 

“I would happily fill you with a new baby every year, so you can’t leave it up to me.” He shifts to kiss the corner of her mouth. “You’re the one who carries them, who goes through giving birth. It’s your decision.”

Rey traces the line of her mate’s neck, then slowly along his jaw. 

“But how many more children do you want? You enjoy them so much.”

Ben pulls her in closer against him. 

“I enjoy raising them _with you_. However many you want to give us. The number doesn’t matter. We could stop now, and I’d be more than happy with our son and our beautiful little twins.”

“Hmm,” Rey muses aloud. 

She thinks of how Ben had been the one to stay up late in the nursery with the twins, in the first month when they hardly ever slept through the night. She remembers coming to the nursery in the early morning to find Ben asleep in the rocking chair, Luis sleeping in one of his arms and Leah in the other. She remembers how he’d indulged Julian’s phase of pretending he was an astronaut in space. Ben had gotten materials to build little miniature planets with Julian for his room, and counted down a spaceship blast-off for every bath time. 

Rey reaches up to stroke her husband’s cheek. Their children had brought him all the love and acceptance he never thought he deserved, but was slowly coming to welcome. She wants to fill their home with children until he’s convinced of what they all see in him - what Rey has always seen.

She nuzzles a kiss to his lips. 

“How about one more? But in a few years. The twins are going to be handfuls.”

Ben holds her close and kisses the top of her head. 

“That sounds perfect.” He kisses the spot where he mated her, keeping his mouth against the small mark left by his teeth years ago. “Thank you, mate.”

Rey sighs, weightless and pleased. She strokes circles against his bare chest as she hears what he means.

_Thank you for everything. All you’ve given me. There will never be words._

* * *

Parents aren’t _supposed_ to have favorite children. To his credit, Ben doesn’t act that way - doing his best to split his time and attention equally between all four. But from the first time the tiny bundle of their youngest, slightly premature daughter was placed in his arms, Rey could tell. Ben had looked into her wide brown eyes, touched her tiny hand with one of his large fingertips, and little Ava had snatched his heart right from his chest. 

Her first word was ‘Dada.’ After a nightmare, she would cry in her crib until Ben came to hold her. Only Ben was allowed to join the secret tea parties she hosted in her room. 

At three years old, Ava takes a bad spill outside while playing hide and seek with her siblings. 

“It was an accident! Nobody pushed her or anything,” Julian says nervously as he grabs Ben by the sleeve and pulls him outside.

Ava shrieks on the back patio, clutching her bloody knee as the twins try in vain to calm her down. 

“I want Daddy!!” she screams again.

Ben rushes forward - instincts flaring awake with an immediacy he hasn’t felt in years. 

“Daddy!” Ava sobs as Ben gathers her close and carries her inside. She throws her little arms tight around his neck, sniffling into his shoulder. 

“It’s okay, princess. We’ll get that knee cleaned up.”

Ben sits her on the bathroom counter, speaking to her soothingly as he gathers bandaids and antiseptic wipes. 

“You took a little tumble while you were running, huh?”

Ava sniffles, rubbing her fists against her eyes. “Uh-huh. Hurts.”

“I know it does, sweetie, but it’ll stop soon. I promise.”

Ben kneels down to clean away the blood and any dirt. To distract her from the sting of the antiseptic, he asks, “This doesn’t mean your tea party tomorrow is cancelled, does it? Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Whale will be so disappointed.”

Ava gasps, mouth forming a wide O. “No, no! Tea party tomorrow! Mr. Whale is so excited!”

Ben dabs the last of the antiseptic on the scrape. “Mmhm. He wants to try some of the cupcakes you and Mama baked yesterday. Do you think he’ll like them?”

“Yeah! Mr. Whale loves cupcakes. ‘especially the sprinkles.”

“The rainbow ones or chocolate ones?”

“Rainbow.”

Ben smooths the bandaid down over the scrape, then smiles up at his youngest daughter. 

“See? All done. You’re such a brave girl, I bet it already feels a bit better, doesn’t it?”

Ava nods, but holds out her arms towards him all the same. Ben scoops her up as he stands. 

He just stands there and holds her for a while in the bathroom, rocking and bouncing her a little as he listens to her soft whimpers taper off into sleep. 

He stands there for a while longer as she slumbers. He thinks about the fact that this little girl cried for _him_ when she hurt herself, and ever since she was a baby, he’d been the only one who could soothe her when she was upset. This little girl is _his_ , his daughter. This little girl loves him. 

Rationally, he’s known the same about Julian, Luis, and Leah. Perhaps it took this many cycles of caring for infants and toddlers for his doubt to finally wear away. Somehow, this moment is the first time Ben realizes he is truly able to accept what Rey and their children have been trying to show him in so many ways, for so many years.

He is worthy. 

* * *

“Dad?”

Rey had sent Ben and Julian out to trim the hedges and weed the garden. In retrospect, Ben should have seen the question coming. Julian’s ten years old now, and he’d known it would come sooner or later.

“Yeah?” Distracted, Ben wrangles with a particularly stubborn tangle of weeds. 

A few feet away from him, the hedge clippers have gone still in Julian’s hands. 

“Can I see what you keep in the armory?”

Ben lets the weeds fall from his hands. He stays bent over for a moment, schooling his expression back to calm from his immediate reaction of disquiet. When he stands, his demeanor is focused and serious. 

“First of all, there’s no ‘armory’ in the house. Real life isn’t one of your video games.”

Julian looks at the ground, chewing his bottom lip and looking abashed. 

Ben sighs, pushing a hand through his hair as he forces his voice gentler. He can’t fault his son’s natural curiosity. 

“The weapons I keep in the vault are for one purpose only: To keep you, your siblings, and your mother safe. They are not toys, they’re not an experiment, they’re not a test. You understand?”

Julian keeps chewing his bottom lip. “Yeah, Dad, I get all that. But still…”

“Still,” Ben sighs again. “I understand you’re curious.”

“It’s not just that.” Julian grips the handle of the clippers a bit tighter in his hands. He tosses hair from his eyes - that black hair just like Ben’s, while the other children all inherited Rey’s chestnut color. He looks at his father with something like determination in his eyes. “I want to help you.”

Sensing this would grow into a longer conversation, Ben picks his way out from the garden to where Julian stands. He sits down in the grass and motions for his son to do the same, facing each other. 

“Listen, Julian. If I do a good job taking care of you and our family, then you would never have to touch a weapon in your whole life.”

Julian blanches a little. “No, I’m not saying you’re not doing a good job-”

Ben waves his hand. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, I know it might seem exciting. I know it might seem like you have to learn about them to become a man or to prove something - either to me or to yourself. But I had to use those weapons for my job for a long time. They were my life, before I met your mother. And they were a terrible life.”

Julian looks down, his hands ripping up chunks of grass. 

“You’ve told me your old job means you have enemies. People who might want revenge on you and Mom.”

Ben nods. While sparing them the details, Ben and Rey have always been upfront with their children about their pasts. They knew waiting and keeping secrets would only backfire one day.

“That’s right.”

“It’s just… wouldn’t it be better to have a second person around to help you? If any of those guys show up?”

“Your mother knows how to use them.”

Julian’s mouth pinches to the side, unhappy. Ben watches him tear up grass with a bit more ferocity. 

Julian stays quiet, a distinctly dejected air about him. 

Ben waits, until he begins to realize what this is really about. 

“Julian, look at me.” 

He does, but the sulking look remains. 

“Julian, you know I’m proud of you, right? You get top grades from your tutors, you always beat me at chess, you’re far too smart for me…”

“But you don’t trust me, Dad!”

Ben is silent for a moment, taken aback. 

“Of course I do, son. It’s just… I need to protect you even more than that.”

Julian scoffs, tugging up another clump of grass. 

“Maybe I don’t want to be _smart_. I want to be tough, like you.”

Ben founders, utterly at a loss. Something in his throat is moved and touched, but something deeper down in his chest aches like hell. 

“Julian,” he finally says, voice soft as he has to look away from his son. “Trust me. You don’t want to be like me. I don’t want that for you.”

“Why not?! Mom and Ava adore you. The twins idolize you. Why wouldn’t I?”

An old, dark stab of anger strikes Ben. He keeps looking away, to make sure his son doesn’t think it’s directed at him. 

“Because if any of you are ever in danger - if anything ever happens to any of you, it’ll be my fault. Because I have to live with that.” Ben’s fist spasms against his leg, tightening until he forces it to relax. “Because I killed people. A lot of people, Julian. And now that’s why you can’t go to a regular school or play with other kids or go anywhere alone. That’s why we have to live the way we do, in secret.”

Julian seems to wave this away. “So? I don’t even know what other life I might be missing. I’m not mad about it. Why are you?”

Julian stares at his father now, eager and hungry to say the things he’s wanted to for so long. When Ben continues looking away, expression distant and troubled, Julian only pushes further.

“And that’s stupid. To think I’d be angry at you or hate you because of things that happened before I was ever born. You killed people, but then you stopped, and now you’re my Dad. You’re someone else, now. Why do you make it more complicated?”

Ben tries to understand his son’s perspective. He really does. But he’s not sure he can ever see in such black and white. Still, there’s a distant comfort in what his son is trying to say. A comfort Ben tries to return, as best he can.

“If you think it doesn’t matter who I used to be… tell me why you want to learn? If there’s something I haven’t been giving you… something you need from me, please just tell me. If it can be anything other than putting a gun in your hands…”

“Maybe because I want to protect you, while you’re protecting everyone else. I want to have your back.”

“Julian…”

“Please, Dad.”

Ben takes a long, deep breath. He looks towards the house, towards the living room windows where he’d left Rey, fixing a hole in Ava’s favorite pajamas. 

Rey had loved him when he was a murderer. She’d loved him even when he came home to her with blood on his hands - sometimes literally. She’d killed to stay with him. He’s not so much different now than the mercenary who’d mated her. She sees and accepts all of him as one whole. Ben knows that to her, the man who turned the syndicate boss’ head to pulp is the same one who tucks their children into bed every night.

Maybe his son doesn’t see him much differently. Whatever he used to be - it’s not evil because it’s still _him._

His son wants to protect him. 

At the end of the day, when you care about someone, you should help them hold onto what they care for too. And if his son seems something worth protecting, then maybe Ben should, too. 

“We’ll have to talk to your mother.” Julian perks up, eyes going wide as he straightens. “She _really_ won’t like this.”

The boy scrambles forward, until he can throw his arms around Ben. 

Ben laughs a little. “I haven’t said yes, yet. If Rey puts her foot down, you’re out of luck.”

Julian nods as he pulls away, but he’s smiling. Ben realizes just how much his consideration means to Julian already. 

“She can’t say no to both of us, can she?”

“Well, she’s capable of anything, your mother.”

Rey takes it decidedly better than Ben had expected. 

“To be honest, I’m surprised he didn’t ask you sooner,” Rey says nonchalantly, towel drying her hair as she walks between their bedroom and the adjacent bathroom. Ben’s already in bed, just watching her, his eyebrows up near his hairline. 

“I expected you to freak out about this. I told him you’d probably say no, and that would be the end of it.”

Rey rolls her eyes at him as she begins brushing out her hair.

“As if you can deny any of the kids anything.”

“Hey now, I can be very stern when I want to be.”

“Right. Just make sure you’re not too stern at Ava’s next secret tea party.”

Not even trying to argue that point, Ben stands from bed and comes over to his mate. Standing close behind her, he leans close to kiss her bare shoulder, when she draws her hair over the other. 

“You’re really okay with this? If I teach Julian how to fire a gun, it’ll only be a matter of time before Luis wants to learn too.”

“I thought it was kind of inevitable. The boys want your approval. They want to be close to you. What better boy bonding is there?” She pauses, brushing out a tangle. “Besides, it’s practical. Of course we’d love if none of our babies ever had to touch a firearm, but that’s not the life we live. Things could still be dangerous. We might as well teach them to defend themselves.”

Ben is quiet for a moment, just watching as Rey finishes brushing out her hair. He rests a hand at her hip, tracing circles in her bare skin. 

“You’re right,” he finally says. “It is practical. I guess it was a bit naive of me to think I could just keep them sheltered forever.”

Rey turns towards him. “Not naive. Loving.” She reaches up to stroke through his hair once. “But look, that time I got captured - if you hadn’t caught up to them before they put me on that plane, the knife you gave me would have saved my life.” She kisses his chin. “You’re still being a good father, if you give him this. You’re teaching him to take care of himself. And that too is a way of protecting him.” 

Ben gathers her in his arms, bundling her close against him. “Can’t we just keep them in a safe, padded room forever?”

Rey hums as she nuzzles in closer against him. “I wish that too, sometimes. But then I think about how loud the twins are, when they’re in the same room for too long.”

Then she pulls back and reaches to hook a finger in the waistband of Ben’s sweatpants. She looks up at him with a bitten lip and quirked brow and shit, Ben _already_ feels his blood going southward. 

“Now that that’s resolved, take these off and get on the bed. I had a long day and I’d like to work it out on you. On your cock, specifically.”

Ben shivers, grinning as he leans in to briefly nip at her neck before he obeys. 

“Wife. I live to serve you.”

* * *

Leah insists on chocolate milk. They try to distract her with everything they can think of, but two hours later she still won’t let it go. Ben cracks first. 

“I’ll go get chocolate powder,” he capitulates. “Do we need anything else while I’m out, Rey?” he asks, pulling on his coat. 

“Might as well get some more of those fruit gummies too for Ava. We wouldn’t want another tantrum.”

“Heaven forbid.”

Ben starts the car and backs out of the long driveway. Night is just falling when he returns home a half hour later. 

At the entry gate, he freezes midway through rolling the window down. He stares at the security panel where he and Rey scan their thumbprints to open the gate. One corner of it seems misaligned, as if it had been opened like a hinge and not quite set back right. 

Adrenaline already kicking in, he presses his thumb to the screen to open the gate and floors the engine up the driveway. 

He quickly opens the glove compartment and loads the handgun stored there. Barely pausing to survey the house first, he leaps from the car and sprints to the side door, where he might have the element of surprise on any potential intruders. 

He unlocks the door to the sound of children crying. Ben forgets everything, every shred of logic or strategy or self-preservation as he rushes towards the kitchen, where the noise comes from. 

Gun raised in his hand and fear hurtling through him like nothing he’s ever known, he freezes in the doorway. 

Julian kneels in the corner, the eleven year old trying to console his nine-year-old twin siblings as well as six-year-old Ava. “It’s okay. The bad man’s gone,” he keeps telling them. 

On the other side of the room, Rey stands very still, her eyes fixed down towards something at her feet. 

“Daddy!” Ava cries out, the first one to spot him. She moves to run to him, but Julian spots the gun in his father’s hand and holds her back. 

Rey doesn’t look up at him. 

Ben slowly steps around the kitchen island, to see what lies at Rey’s feet. 

The body of a large man all in black is spread across their kitchen floor. One of the kitchen knives sticks out from his back. The blood pooling out of him has nearly reached Rey’s sock-clad feet. 

Then, Rey looks up at Ben. Her expression is detached and focused. 

“He said there were more coming. Said he’d given a signal when he saw you leave.”

Ben’s empty hand clenches into a twitching fist. He hasn’t felt focused rage like this in over ten years. His body shakes with it, but his mind retains its reflexes. He knows what to do.

“Julian.”

Julian looks to his father immediately, where he still has his arms around his little siblings. 

“I need you to go to the vault. Retrieve two rifles for me and your mother and a pistol for yourself. Make absolutely sure you lock up on your way out.”

Julian nods and runs from the room. The second he’s gone, the twins run to Rey and Ava to Ben. Rey hurriedly ushers them away from the body. Ben picks up Ava in one arm, while his mind flicks through a hundred different potential scenarios of attack. 

Rey kneels with her arms around the twins as they whimper into her chest. But her focus stays on Ben, expression hard as she waits for his instructions. 

Ben loves her more than he can bear: His mate, always so perfect. Always what he needs.

“Go set up the basement barricade. Cover the windows. Keep the children as quiet as you can. I need to stay outside to watch for them.”

Rey nods. Julian returns a moment later with the requested weapons. 

“I locked up and hid the door. I made sure.”

“Good.” 

From the crook of Ben’s arm, Ava watches as Rey and Julian start loading the guns. She spots the black, gleaming thing in her father’s other hand that looks suspiciously similar. Something about the sight of it makes her start to cry. 

Ben’s heart cracks. He yearns to comfort her, but there’s no time now. 

“It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” he murmurs to her, kissing the side of her head before he walks over to hand her down into the twins’ care. The little girl doesn’t stop crying. 

“Here, Dad.”

Julian holds out one of the rifles. Next to him, Rey finishes filling the barrel of her own and clicks the safety off. 

Ben takes the weapon with a nod, holstering his handgun in a pocket for now. 

“I’m going to keep watch for them outside.”

Julian nods, moving to pick up his own weapon. 

Ben quickly shakes his head. “You’re staying in the basement with your mother and siblings.”

“But I can…”

“Julian.” Rey speaks his name crisp and emphatic, immediately silencing his protest. 

For only the brief moment he can spare, Ben rests a hand on his oldest son’s shoulder. 

“Protect your mother, okay?”

Julian’s eyes widen as he looks up at Ben. He nods slowly, gravity to the action. 

Observing them, Rey knows this isn’t quite her husband thinking she needs their eleven-year-old son’s protection. Really, it’s hardly about her at all. It’s something symbolic - something Julian had been seeking from his father for a long time.

Ben slips a knife from the kitchen block. He moves towards the door as Rey ushers the children towards the basement. 

“You all stay down there until I come back. No matter what you may hear outside.”

Rey nods. Just before Ben disappears out the door, their eyes lock for a heavy, pregnant moment. Rey’s eyes spark like flints. Ben accepts the offering of their ferocity, letting it fuel and focus him. His eyes return to her something utterly useless in the current moment but no less valuable to Rey: His love. 

Ben waits, each of his senses alert as he circles the perimeter of the house, waiting for the inevitable challenge. 

They come in a group. Ben counts three in the dim light of the stars. He drops one with a well-aimed shot from a distance. The second dodges Ben’s rifle shot, so he switches to the closer-range gun as he rushes at them, the kitchen knife in his other hand. Their own knives out, Ben takes a gash to the arm before overpowering the second. The third makes a run for the house, but Ben whirls just in time to land three shots in his back before he reaches the door. 

Ben doesn’t relax yet. He takes off his jacket and presses it unflinchingly to the wound in his arm, trying to staunch the blood flow as he waits to make sure there won’t be a second wave. 

Then he hears a scream from inside the house. Ava’s scream. 

Ben takes off, sprinting towards the house for the second time that night with fear choking him. 

A fourth one had apparently snuck in while Ben was kept busy by the first three. Ben hurtles through the house until he reaches the hallway leading to the basement. 

Rey is crouched with her arms around Ava, kneeling messily as if she’d fallen there in her haste to seize and protect the little girl. Her rifle lays strewn on the ground several feet away, too far to be of any use. She’s trapped with her back to the man holding the gun leveled at them both. 

A distance behind Rey and Ava, Julian kneels with the twins behind him, both clinging to his back. He holds his pistol in an expert grip, but his hands are shaking too much, his eyes wet and desperate. 

“Sorry, Dad,” Julian forces out, voice hiccuping. “Ava got loose and ran out looking for you before we could stop her.”

Ben looks only at the trespasser, his eyes narrow and hateful. The man just smirks. 

“Nearly broke my heart, the way the kid was yelling for you.” He steps closer to Rey and Ava, leering at Ben as the barrel of his gun nears Rey’s head. Rey doesn’t turn to look, just pulls Ava closer. “I wonder what you’ll do, when you see them both die?”

“Tell me this,” Ben grits out, stalling as his mind churns through every possible scenario that might let him land the first shot. “Was it the doctor?”

“You got it. He sang like a bird and we didn’t even have to hurt a hair on his head. Money did the job all on its own.”

“You’re the remnants of the Syndicate, aren’t you? Even ten years later, you’re still nursing this grudge?”

“We lost _everything_ because of you. You, and her betrayal.”

Ben knows he has to take the shot - has to do it on instinct without aiming. He needs to shut his mind off against the fear flooding him senseless and just fucking do it. 

In a low, toneless voice, Ben says only, “Rey.”

She understands instantly, flattening herself down out of the man’s shot line and pulling Ava’s head tight to her chest, covering her eyes. 

At nearly the same moment, Ben fires from his side without any motion of warning that would lose him the first shot. The bullet hits the man in the thigh. In the time it takes the man to yell, Ben has already leveled his gun for a proper shot and sunk two bullets in his heart. The intruder crumples, gun sliding harmlessly from his hand. 

Ben just stands there for a long moment, chest heaving as the crushing relief wars with his still-surging adrenaline. Finally, he musters enough force of will to remember what he still needs to do. 

“I’m going to make sure the house is secure. I’ll be right back.”

Thinking only of how desperately he needs to hold his family in his arms, Ben walks from room to room until he’s certain the house is empty. He makes sure every alarm in the security system is reactivated after whatever tinkering the intruders had done. He double checks every lock. 

Only then does he return to the basement entrance, where Rey now has the three youngest all gathered in her arms. None of them are quite crying, just the occasional sniffle and whimper, almost as if they’re afraid to cause loud noise. Julian stands a few feet away, his eyes fixed on the man Ben just killed. 

“Help me carry this outside?” Ben asks his oldest. He’ll figure out tomorrow how to dispose of them all. For now, he just needs this filth out of the house and away from his family. Julian nods shakily. He helps Ben drag the body outside, then the second one from the kitchen. 

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Julian says. “I froze. I couldn’t protect anyone.” He hangs his head, until Ben reaches to ruffle his hair. 

“Actually, you did a great job looking after your siblings. Protecting people doesn’t always mean killing someone else.”

Instead of withdrawing his hand right away, Ben lets it rest on Julian’s shoulder for a long moment, reassuring himself his son is unharmed. After blinking quickly a few times, Julian briefly crushes himself forward against Ben’s chest. 

They return and this time the twins run to Ben, one hugging him from either side. Ben crouches down and takes them both in his arms, kissing Luis’ hair and then Leah’s forehead. 

“You’re both alright?” he asks, voice shaking a bit despite his best efforts. Luis nods, trying to maintain a brave face as his twin sister sniffles. 

“We’re okay, Dad. You were here so we’re just fine.”

Leah gasps. “Dad, your arm!” 

With disinterest, Ben glances at the gash on his arm where the bleeding has mostly stopped. He’d nearly forgotten about it. 

“I’m fine, sweetheart.” Ben gives a wobbly smile as he smooths Leah’s brown hair back and kisses her again for good measure. “You’re all safe, so I’m more than fine.”

Once the twins receive their needed reassurances, Ben looks up towards Rey and Ava. Ben’s need to hold his mate is like physical agony. He needs reassurance that she’s whole and safe and warm as ever. 

Rey’s attention for the moment is devoted to Ava, as she tries to soothe the girl’s soft crying. His heart still hurting from the moment her tears had begun while he held her, Ben moves towards them. But when Ben draws near, their youngest daughter does something she’s never done before.

The moment she sees him, Ava whimpers and hides her face against Rey’s shoulder, her head turned away from Ben. Her little arms come up around Rey’s neck to cling tightly as she cries a little harder. 

Rey rocks her, her eyes coming up to meet Ben’s where his pain is evident. 

“She’s frightened of me.”

Rey quickly shakes her head. “She’s just shocked by everything. It’s not you.”

Ben forces himself to swallow, despite how his throat’s gone dry and his mouth bitter. 

He’d stopped these men from hurting his family, but they’d made Ben himself the cause of this trauma. Ever since Julian was conceived, he’d only ever used violence to protect his family. Still, his youngest, dearest little one was harmed by it. 

Ava wriggles from Rey’s arms and runs off towards her room. Rey finally stands, and Ben’s there in a heartbeat to wrap her up in his arms. 

“Are you alright, mate? You’re not hurt?” he asks, voice weak. 

Rey nods, closing her eyes as she buries her face against his chest, finally letting herself lower the guards and detachment she had to muster to stay strong for her children. 

“I’m fine. We’re all fine. We’re all okay.” She seems to be reassuring herself just as much as him. He kisses her forehead again and again, while she brings her breathing under control. Ben strokes her hair and holds her as close as he can bring her.

“We’re all okay.”

Ben and Rey immediately pack up the house, in preparation to move the family to the New Zealand property. Ben has one loose end to take care of first. 

When Dr. Roberts arrives home that night, it’s not until he’s made his way to the kitchen and turned the light on that he realizes he’s not alone. He gives a cry of surprise when the lights reveal Ben, sitting in one of the kitchen chairs with a shotgun across his lap. 

The doctor pales at the sight of him, backing up instinctively until his back hits the kitchen counter. Ben’s mouth twists in disgust. 

“What? Surprised I’m still alive after you sold out my family?”

“I didn’t… That’s not what happened. They _threatened me…_ ”

Ben scans the man from head to foot, radiating contempt. 

“You look fine to me. It seems you didn’t put up much of a fight once they offered to pay you.”

Ben stands, the weapon loose at his side. The doctor backs himself into the furthest corner of the kitchen. Ben sees his eyes glance towards the block of kitchen knives. 

“Don’t even think about it. They’re closer to me, and I’m faster.”

The doctor licks his lips, trying to regain his composure. “Please. I didn’t know what they planned to do.”

“You didn’t know?” Ben questions, voice low and menacing. “You’re going to have to do better than that. A lot better. Because of you, they held my wife and youngest daughter at gunpoint.” 

The man pales all over again. “Little Ava?”

Ben’s upper lip curls. His voice is only a growl. “Yes. _Little Ava._ ”

He steps closer, leveling the shotgun in his hands as he clicks off the safety.

“You made a grave miscalculation, thinking they were more dangerous than me.”

When Ben gets home, he’s already changed his shirt so the children won’t see any of the bloodstains. He’d been meticulous in wiping down the doctor’s house before he left to ensure he left no trace. 

Rey is just finishing packing up the kitchen when he comes in. The twins are seated at the table, eating sandwiches. 

Ben comes to her immediately, wrapping her in a tight embrace from behind and pressing his face to her hair. He inhales deep, until her scent cleans away any trace of death still lingering around him. 

Rey turns her head into him, her hands lifting to cover his forearms where they’re crossed over her chest. 

“Is it done?”

Ben kisses her temple. 

“It’s all taken care of.”

* * *

After they leave, Ben reports the attackers through an anonymous hotline, claiming to be a neighbor who heard the gunshots. He’d left the bodies where they could be found and hopefully investigated - perhaps leading the police to the rest of the surviving cells. He sells the house through a third party broker, to make it harder for the transaction to be traced.

Within a few days in the new house, the children are already busy arguing over who gets which rooms, splashing in the pond outback, and demanding to be driven to the mountains not so far in the distance. Luis and Leah ask to join the weekly lessons Ben gives Julian on marksmanship and the safe, proper handling of a gun. They bounce back remarkably quickly. 

All except Ava. She seems herself - giggling and imaginative and energetic - when she plays with her older siblings or Rey. But when Ben comes into the room, she goes silent. She drops out of whatever game she’d been playing, loses interest in her toys or TV show, and flees to her room. 

After two weeks of Ava avoiding or running away from him, Rey urges him to try reading her her nightly bedtime story. But the second she sees him enter the room, she shrinks back in her bed and says quietly, “Want Mama.”

Ben retreats and sends Rey to her instead. When Rey finishes reading, she doesn’t find Ben in their bedroom. She checks the other children’s rooms, checks the living room, but doesn’t see him. Finally, she turns the light on at the back patio and spots him - sitting outside without a jacket, his head bent low between his shoulders as he sits atop the picnic table. 

Rey quickly pulls on her own coat, grabs Ben’s, and goes out to him. 

“It’s so cold out here.” She places the coat over his shoulders. She says nothing as he briefly turns his face away from her, wiping away the silent tears that had crept down his cheeks. 

Rey sits beside him, hugs one of his arms against her chest, and lays her head on his shoulder. 

“She loves you so much, Ben. Nothing’s going to change that in the long run.”

Ben sniffs once, his hand clutching Rey’s knee. “She won’t even _look at me_ , Rey. And why should I be surprised? I’ve done things just like those men.”

Rey resolutely shakes her head. “That’s bullshit and you know it. You never went after people’s families. You did jobs - it wasn’t personal or vindictive or cruel. You were - you are nothing like them.”

Rey keeps her head on his shoulder. He keeps his hand across her knee, squeezing every few seconds. 

“Just wait until she has her next tea party. She knows it could never be a success without you there.”

Ben gives a harsh wipe of his nose. His daughter is processing a traumatic experience she’s too young to understand. Of course she needs more time. But the fact remains that he aches every day with the fact that he hasn’t hugged her since the attack. He still hasn’t experienced the rush of relief from gathering her up in his arms and just holding her. Not even once.

But he knows she’s safe, and comforts himself with that fact every time she turns away from him.

The following night, Rey tries talking to Ava after finishing her bedtime story and tucking her in. 

“Honey, if Daddy did something you think was scary… you know he only did it to keep you safe, right? He only did it to protect you. The same way I grabbed and held onto you when you ran out from the basement.”

Ava curls up around Mr. Rabbit, frowning at him. 

“He was holding the same thing as the bad men.”

Rey gently strokes her hair. “But Julian and I held them too. There’s no reason to be scared of us.”

Ava turns to face the wall. 

“Daddy’s made the big noise.”

Sensing the topic closed for now, Rey straightens and moves to the door, reaching to turn the light out. 

“Mama?” Ava calls just before Rey’s finger reaches the switch. “Will you come to my tea party tomorrow?”

Rey frowns, worried now for the first time. “Oh, sweetie. It would break your poor Daddy’s heart if you had a tea party without him.”

Ava’s snuggled down in her blankets so her face is hidden, but Rey sees one of her hands stroking her stuffed bunny’s long ears. Rey knows she does it to comfort herself. 

Rey bites her lip, feeling like she’ll hurt someone beloved no matter what she says. She finally settles on, “If you won’t invite him, then why don’t you ask Leah tomorrow? I’m sure she’d love to come.”

No tea party is held the next day, so Rey remains hopeful. 

Ben tries to be stoic around the other children, but they can all tell exactly what’s going on. Julian makes the next attempt at an intervention.

Lacking a certain degree of tact or caution in the common way of older brothers, he cuts right to it. 

“Ava, you’re being ridiculous. Why are you mad at Dad when he got rid of those bad guys?”

The little girl gives a half shrug, not looking at her brother as she shifts her stuffed animals’ seating configuration on her bedroom floor. 

“Dad fought for us. To keep us safe,” Julian insists, no small amount of pride in his voice.

“Don’t like fighting,” Ava mumbles, curling up a bit on herself. “Not even on TV.”

Julian rolls his eyes. “Sometimes we have to fight in real life. Sometimes there’s no other choice.”

“Daddy used to never fight.”

“He was always going to have to, sooner or later.”

Ava shakes her head firmly. 

“He started fighting just like the bad men. He never did that before.”

Julian sighs and, for now, leaves his youngest sister alone.

Finally, the twins take their turn. They’re outside on the swings, Luis pushing Ava while Leah sits on the swing beside them.

“Ava, remember when we used to play that wrestling game with Dad?” Leah starts. “Luis and I had him pinned. We were both sitting on top of him - I had his legs and Luis had his arms and we totally won. But you came into the room and I guess you didn’t know it was just a game. You pushed us both off him, yelling at us not to hurt Dad.”

Luis keeps giving Ava little pushes on the swing as he finishes, “It’s kind of reversed now, get it, Ava? To us, it looks like you might be the one sitting on top of Dad, and we just want to make sure he’s okay. Sometimes, he seems really sad.”

Ava looks down at her lap as Luis keeps pushing her. She doesn’t have any more fun on the swings that day. 

Carrying Mr. Rabbit around the house with her, Ava watches her father more carefully over the next few days. She peeks around the corner when she hears the twins shrieking with laughter in the living room. She watches enviously for a while as Ben flips them onto the couch, obliging when they keep yelling, “Again! Again!” The laughter continues until Rey comes into the room and halts the ill-advised gymnastics. 

She watches from the windows in the playroom as Ben instructs Julian through a self-defense routine in the backyard. She can’t hear what they’re saying, just watches as Ben brings a pretend, slow-motion punch towards Julian’s chest, and the boy practices deflecting and returning the blow while his opponent’s guard is down. She keeps watching as Ben shows Julian how to break out of a bind. At one point, Julian slips while practicing a spin block and Ben immediately jolts forward to steady him. They laugh about something, Julian grinning up at his father. 

Ava strokes Mr. Rabbit’s ears. Daddy seems so normal again. She remembers now how Ben and Julian would sometimes fire something loud at a target in their old backyard. Usually Julian would make the noise, while Ben gave him guidance and corrected his form. She’d never been frightened back then. Had they made the bang with those same scary black things? Why had it looked so different in her Daddy’s hand that night? She frowns to herself, confused. 

During movie night, Ava sits curled up against Rey, Mr. Rabbit bundled in her arms. Ben lounges on the couch with the twins piled mostly on top of him. Julian sits curled in an armchair. Distracted from the movie, Ava keeps watching Louis and Leah giggling as they try to hide pieces of popcorn in Ben’s hair. Ben picks each one out and chides them to stop, but his amused little smile renders him rather ineffective. 

Ava squeezes Mr. Rabbit. Daddy had acted so different that night. His face had been different, his voice too. She hadn’t liked it one bit. But maybe Mama was right, and he’d only looked like that for her sake. Maybe it was only because her Daddy would do anything for her.

In something of a test, Ava spills her cereal the next morning. She knows the colored milk and sugary cereal Mama only occasionally lets her eat will stick all over the floor. Ben turns from the sink and surveys the mess. Ava holds her breath as she watches him. 

“Had a spill there?”

Wary of the distance Ava still keeps from him, Ben doesn’t try to approach her at the table. Wordlessly, he simply retrieves the paper towels and spray cleaner from under the sink. Before he sets to cleaning, he picks up the overturned bowl off the floor and washes it in the sink. He refills it with a bigger serving than Mama ever allows, splashes milk in, and sets it before Ava. Chewing her bottom lip, she doesn’t look up at him, but she sees his hand linger for half a second, as if debating whether to ruffle her hair. 

He draws his hand back, then kneels on the kitchen floor to clean up her mess. 

Ava silently eats her whole bowl of cereal while Ben scrubs the floor. She rubs a little fist against her eyes once, when all the sugar Daddy let her have makes her cry a little bit.

Ben stands at the closet, just inside the front door. It’s snowing outside, so he’s about to pull on a coat before going to shovel the driveway. 

Ava comes down the stairs. She freezes on the bottom step when she sees him. He hasn’t noticed her yet, most of his torso buried in the closet as he tries to dig his coat out from behind all of the children’s. Ava looks around. Julian and the twins are outside playing in the snow already, and Rey’s nowhere in sight. 

The little girl takes a big breath. This is her moment. 

Still in her pajamas, she hops off the stairs and runs to Ben. When she reaches him, she plasters herself to his leg, her arms wrapping around his thigh and hugging tight. 

Half inside the closet, Ben freezes. Only one child still hasn’t reached his waist. He slowly rights himself where he stands and looks down. 

Ava’s eyes are scrunched closed. Her face is pressed to Ben’s thigh as she squeezes his leg a little tighter. 

“It’s okay, Daddy. I know you only hurt the bad guys.”

Ben’s lungs seem to constrict, making it difficult to breathe even as the weight he’s been carrying in his chest finally begins to unravel.

“Ava…” 

With careful, trembling fingers, Ben touches the top of her head. When she doesn’t pull away, he smooths the palm of his huge, deadly hand across her soft brown hair, so gently she barely feels it.

There’s so much he yearns to explain to her. So much he wants to ask her forgiveness for. So much he aches to promise her. He swallows past the burning feeling in his throat; blinks past the mist in his eyes. It will have to wait until she’s older. 

Ava pulls back just enough to look up at him with her wide brown eyes. 

“Sorry I hurt your feelings, Daddy.”

“Oh, Princess…” Ben can’t wait another second. He crouches down and envelops her in his arms. She curls her arms around his neck immediately, hiding her face against his neck. He kisses all over her forehead and the top of her head - so many kisses to make up for. “It’s okay. It’s okay, sweetie.”

“Will you still come to my tea parties?” she asks, eyes wide and apprehensive. “Mr. Whale missed you.”

Ben smooths her hair and swears the world is perfect. 

“Of course I will. I missed Mr. Whale too.”

* * *

Julian and the twins walk ahead on the forest path, arguing about some videogame. Ben and Rey follow a distance behind, Ava perched on Ben’s shoulders and a straining canvas bag looped over Rey’s arm. 

Luis’ latest craze over astronomy had brought him hurtling into the kitchen the day before. 

“Mom! Dad! There’s going to be a meteor shower tomorrow night! Can we go out and watch? Can we, can we?”

Rey had peered at the boy suspiciously. 

“Is this an excuse to stay out past your bedtime?”

Luis pouted. “No! I’ll show you in the almanac!” The excitement with which he tore from the room and reappeared with the heavy book in tow was evidence enough.

Rey and Ben looked at the star charts as Luis flipped through the pages, pointing spiritedly. They looked at each other. 

“We could all go out,” Ben had ventured, watching for his wife’s reaction and waiting for her cue. “Watch from the valley. The visibility should be good.”

Rey looked back to Luis’ hopeful face. He even folded his hands together and unleashed puppy eyes. No one could withstand that. 

“Fine, we’ll all go and make a night of it.”

When Ben and Rey emerge from the tree line, Luis waves his arms back towards them from a distance off.

“Here! This should be a good spot!”

He’s already started setting up his portable telescope by the time Ben sets Ava down in the grass nearby and Rey starts unpacking blankets, sweaters, and snacks. 

Julian and Leah chase each other, shouting and laughing. 

“Wanna play too!” Ava calls as she takes off towards her sister and brother. 

Ben watches and calls over, “Don’t get rowdy with Ava playing, you two.”

“We won’t!”

Soon, Ava’s shrieks of delight join the yelling as some version of tag involving spinning and flopping into the grass resumes play. 

Rey sits on the blanket with Luis now, helping him focus his telescope while he excitedly chatters every fact about stars he can bring to mind. Ben takes over unpacking the food, smiling unconsciously as he listens to Rey and Luis.

“And - and sometimes, when we see a star, it could be dead already!”

“No way.”

“Yeah! That star might be gone! But it takes so, so long for the light to reach Earth that we wouldn’t know! That star could’ve already…. uh… super… super something…”

“Gone supernova?”

“Yeah!! Isn’t that wicked?”

“Wicked.”

Luis turns his attention to his telescope for a while, fine tuning the viewfinder while there’s still light from the sunset. 

Ava tires out from tag first, traipsing back and throwing herself down face-first on the blanket. 

“Want some juice, Ava?” Rey asks. 

The little girl picks her head up. “Apple!”

“Lucky, that’s just what Mama brought.”

Ben suddenly pales. “I forgot Leah’s chocolate milk.”

Rey digs in the giant bag for a moment, until she produces a small thermos. “Got it here.”

Ben breathes a sigh of relief, then leans over to peck Rey’s cheek. “You’re without parallel.”

Rey sneaks a quick inhale against her mate’s neck, savoring the way his scent never fails to make her blood sing. “I know.”

“Mom!” Leah hollers from a distance away. “Did we bring chips?”

Rey digs around in the bag again before holding them up for Leah to see. 

“And chocolate milk?!”

Rey holds up the thermos as well.

She trots back towards them - her older brother not far in tow behind her, now that he’s lost his playmates. 

As they near, Ava climbs to her feet and scrambles across the blanket to claim the prize spot for the night in Daddy’s lap. She sips her juice box with feigned innocence when Leah shoots her a scowl.

“There’s room here, Leah,” Ben assures her, patting the blanket between him and Rey. Chips and chocolate milk in hand, Leah comes to snuggle into Rey’s side.

Luis’ excitement grows as night falls. “Quiet, quiet, guys!”

“It’s not like the meteors will hear us,” Julian mutters. Luis glares and Rey gives Julian’s shoulder a chiding nudge. 

But when the shooting stars begin streaking across the night sky, Julian is just as mesmerized as his younger siblings. 

With great magnanimity, Luis allows Leah and Julian to take turns looking through the telescope. Ava remains curled in Ben’s lap, her eyes sinking closed not long after. 

Julian and Leah fall asleep after about an hour or so, but Luis keeps on gazing heavenward, awed and thrilled. 

Rey scoots closer to Ben on the blanket. “Our little astronomer.”

“Mmhm.” Ben checks that the other children are all sleeping, assesses that Luis is unlikely to overhear them, then murmurs to Rey, “Our little astronomer who’s the only one still awake and quite distracted at the moment.”

“Oh?”

Moving carefully so as not to disturb her, Ben settles Ava down on the blanket near where Leah sleeps. Then, moving not quite as carefully, he draws Rey quickly towards him. 

Her fingers sink immediately into his hair as his lips trail down her neck. 

“It’s romantic out here, hm?” Ben hums the words against skin, as his teeth tease at her collarbone. 

Rey’s breath hitches. “Especially when I can’t make any noise or risk waking the kids.”

Ben tugs her down to the blanket with him, laying out beside her as he cups her face to kiss her. 

“Leave the noise in my mouth. Let me taste it,” he murmurs, leaving soft bites along her bottom lip. 

_“Alpha…_ ”

Ben slides one of his thighs between her legs, kissing up the soft sounds she makes as he grasps her hips and helps her move against him. 

“Shhh, sweetheart,” Ben breathes as he slips a hand between their bodies, putting pressure just where he knows she feels it most. He covers her mouth with his other hand and whispers to her to be his good, quiet girl as she comes.

Rey’s still breathing hard in his arms when Luis looks up from his telescope and exclaims just soft enough not to wake the others, “Did you see that one?”

“Sure did. It was a bright one,” Ben replies without missing a beat. Rey muffles breathless laughter against his chest. 

They lie in hazy, lilting silence for a while, watching the stars as they seem to melt across the sky.

Rey’s breathing evens out like she’s fallen asleep, and Ben’s chest seems fit to burst. He’s holding his mate out under a starry sky, with their children sleeping just nearby. 

Safe. Peaceful. 

It’s so much more than Ben could ever have conceived - his chest alive and bright with innumerable little bursts of starlight.

Not yet asleep, Rey resettles herself against Ben as her voice drifts up from against his chest. 

“You know, sometimes I feel like I hardly recognize myself.”

Brow creasing, Ben draws her a little bit tighter against himself. Sensing his concern, Rey draws her hand along his arm to soothe him. 

“I mean that in a good way. Maybe the most wonderful way.”

Ben brings his lips to her temple. 

“Tell me, mate.”

Rey’s eyes drift halfway closed, a tranquil smile at her lips as her senses float between the sight of the starry sky, the warmth of Ben’s lips and breath against her temple, and the soft rumble of his voice. 

“I think back to the person I was in the syndicate, and she’s a total stranger. So lost, so hopeless. It was like I could barely see further than a foot in front of me. I couldn’t imagine any better life - I didn’t even have the will to try.”

It’s all but impossible for Ben to think of her that way. Rey lit up his entire existence from the very first moment. But he does remember the kind of disaffection she speaks of. Nothing so strong and clear as depression or anger - the shapeless malcontent lacking any discernible direction yet shadowing all else. He remembers it from his own past. 

But only barely. 

“You do smile so much more now than at first,” Ben says. 

Rey nuzzles a kiss against his neck. “So do you.”

They both have the thought of _thank you_ , but it’s been spoken enough between them. They simply share the moment of peace as one. 

Rey resettles herself with her head resting back in the crook of Ben’s arm and shoulder, so she can gaze up at the sky along with him. He brings his other hand across and she holds it. 

A few shooting stars later, Rey asks, “Do you ever ask yourself if we deserve all this?”

Ben hardly needs to think on it. 

“No. Because I know without doubt that you do, and I believe it was me alone that was meant to build it with you.”

She squeezes his hand. It’s a long, distant memory by now, but she still remembers in stark clarity the moment she saw Ben in the doorway, shotgun raised in his hands as the syndicate boss fell. She remembers looking into his face, into his eyes, and suddenly seeing the world clearly for the first time. Blue skies. Shimmering stars. She saw it all in that one moment, and wanted to live. 

“Funny,” Rey whispers, turning again to look into her mate’s face, over ten years later. To trace her fingertips across the features she knows almost better than her own. 

The stars are incandescent, but she’d rather look at him. She can only see so far into the night sky, but here she can see the whole universe. Looking into his eyes and feeling his warmth as if from her own body - they are infinite.

“I think the same thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This verse consumed and entertained me all week, and will probably keep me consumed for the foreseeable future. <3 I don't generally enjoy writing kids, but something about this version of Reylo demanded it and the kiddos just ran wild. 
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts so very much!! :) 
> 
> And hope to catch you around for my future works!  
> [Tumblr](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/xoruffitup)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So warm, mate,” he murmurs against her hair as he leaves kisses there. She unabashedly nuzzles into his shoulder, taking in her fill of his scent. Ben tips his head down to kiss below her ear, his voice unguarded and wondrous. “You smell like home.”_
> 
> _Then he feels how she goes a bit tense in his arms, her scent wavering with nerves. He pulls back to see her eyes, brow furrowing._
> 
> _When their eyes meet, Rey blurts, “It’s Christmas, Ben.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, I couldn't get this quite finished before Christmas came, but hope some of you are still in the Christmas spirit! :) I had the idea to write a few Christmas scenes for these two over the years, and of course had to run with it... Hope you enjoy!

Rey watches the snowfall through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She can barely see the street below through the dense clouds of white. There seem to be miles between where she stands in the highrise penthouse and down where the real people make their way through the snow, clutching bags, paper drink cups, and each other. 

She doesn’t remember the feel of snowflakes melting against her face. There’s a hazy memory of being small, shrieking in delight on the back of a sled, but she cannot fully call it forth. She leaves it, opaque and locked up somewhere deep inside. Staring unseeingly into the expanse of white covering the outside world, she is touched by nothing - not even the memory’s loss. She is hardly even real.

“Rey. One of the new girls is causing trouble.”

She doesn’t turn. In the reflection of the glass, she sees one of the top-ranking syndicate members in the doorway. 

“Boss says it’s time to do your job and go teach her to be quiet.”

Rey doesn’t understand how some people consider snow to be pristine and cleansing. She sees nothing of the sort. There is only a cold, endless nothingness. No color, no beauty, no feeling at all. 

She wishes it would snow forever. 

“I’m coming.”

Ben is beginning to lose feeling above the waist. He’s been staked out on this rooftop for nearly four hours now - propped on his elbows with a rifle positioned at his shoulder and his gaze focused through the sniper scope. He wishes the mark would hurry up already - it’s so fucking cold out. 

Night has begun to fall when he finally spots movement at the back security exit from the Parliament building. Ben’s muscles go taut, lifting up higher on his elbows as he waits a few seconds, squinting through the viewfinder until he’s sure of a kill shot. 

The first shot is deadly. The second is insurance. 

Ben flattens himself down out of sight. After backing from the building’s edge, he waits out the hour until the police disperse and he will make his escape. He’s disassembling his rifle when he feels a blossom of icy cold against his cheek. 

His hands still as he looks up into the grey sky of snowfall at dusk. 

A distant tolling of church bells catches him by surprise. He hadn’t even realized it was Christmas Eve.

* * *

“Rey.”

The moment she turns and sees him in the entryway, she feels ridiculous. What was she thinking, going so overboard?

Still, a soft sigh of happiness comes automatically, her strange anxiety of the last few days melting away as Ben comes to take her in his arms. 

“So warm, mate,” he murmurs against her hair as he leaves kisses there. She unabashedly nuzzles into his shoulder, taking in her fill of his scent. Ben tips his head down to kiss below her ear, his voice unguarded and wondrous. “You smell like home.”

Then he feels how she goes a bit tense in his arms, her scent wavering with nerves. He pulls back to see her eyes, brow furrowing. 

When their eyes meet, Rey blurts, “It’s Christmas, Ben.”

Ben just gazes at her with a puzzled expression, hands rubbing compulsively up and down her arms at the scent of her unexplained unease. 

“... it is. I’m afraid I don’t really know what to do, but... I knew I wanted to spend it with you.”

“I…” Rey swallows, chewing her bottom lip for a moment. “I decorated.”

“Oh?” Still trying to discern what has her so unsure, he lifts a hand to brush his fingers across the mating mark at her neck. Her eyes flutter as her body loosens some of its tension. Then he takes her hand and leaves a kiss against her fingers. “Show me.”

Rey leads him into the living room, where the lights are dimmed. Christmas trimmings shimmer in every corner and lights blink in every window. She’d even acquired a real tree of about four feet, twinkling in the center of the room and swathed in garlands. 

Ben never knew what it means to be cherished. He doesn’t understand the “spirit” of Christmas, has no idea which decorations are typical and which are of Rey’s invention, but if it means he gets to exist in a room filled with Rey’s warmth and the touch of her loving handiwork, he wishes the holiday could be every day. 

Rey’s hand clutches his a bit more tightly, and Ben’s attention hones upon the way her scent spikes with nerves again. 

“Do you like it, Alpha?”

Ben doesn’t know what to say. Or rather, he doesn’t know how. Her scent wavers in time with her hand beginning to tremble within his. 

“Oh, Rey. Love.”

He draws her against him, her back to his front and his arms cradling her close where they can both see the tree she painstakingly decorated. 

He calls forth a soft, deep purr for her, holding her tight to his chest so she can feel its vibrations. “It’s beautiful. You were so very good, to do this for your Alpha. To welcome him home.”

Rey lets him support her weight, lets the gentle calm of his purr gradually ease all the tumbling clamor within her. His lips right against her ear, Rey’s eyes slip closed and a lightness fills her being when Ben murmurs, “Alpha is very pleased.” 

The glowing resolution in her chest is all instinct, yet no less sweet and no less coveted. 

Sensing her lingering desire to be held and soothed, Ben gathers her in his arms and settles onto one of the couches with her curled in his lap. Rey immediately noses against his neck. Ben rubs circles across her hip with one hand, resting his cheek against the top of her head. 

“It’s a different world entirely, in here with you” Ben murmurs. The soft haze of lights filling the room nudges at his deep, lingering pockets of shadow, thawing the cold that grows in him whenever he’s away from her. “With you in my arms. You filling the room.”

Her head laid against his chest, Rey just watches the twinkling tree for a while. She’d been restless for days, her flurry of decorating in turn a blessed distraction and a terrible punishment. 

But with Ben’s warmth all around her and his fingers so gentle in her hair, there is neither good nor evil. Neither despair nor exoneration. They simply are, and all is simple. 

“I couldn’t remember.”

“Remember what?” Ben asks, still searching Rey’s scent and the responses of his own body to hers in attempt to understand. 

Rey curls herself a bit tighter against him. She traces her fingers along his chest - the unfailing protection there. 

“Christmas from my childhood.”

Ben gives her time, just continuing to stroke his fingers through her hair, waiting to listen as she untangles whatever sharp thing she’d carried embedded within.

“I had this stupid thought that if I could arrange the perfect Christmas - bring light and beauty into the world when it’s coldest... It might reverse some of the dark, ugly things.”

Ben bites his lip as he frowns against the top of her head. Still, he waits so as not to rush her or misunderstand.

“Sometimes, I think the good part of me is locked away so deep, I might never find it again. And maybe that’s why I can’t remember…”

Abruptly, Rey looks away from the glowing tree and hides her face against Ben’s chest. He seizes the opening as soon as it’s offered. 

“It’s not stupid, Rey.” After stroking along her hair again, he rests his fingers at her cheek - not forcing her to turn her head, but simply asking. “Please, look at the tree with me? It’s not as breathtaking when it’s not reflecting your eyes.”

Her lips quirk against the fabric of his shirt. She acquiesces. 

“I think it makes perfect sense - what you thought,” he murmurs, his lips and words ghosting across her temple. “Sometimes I feel like that locked up place inside me grows further and further from reach.”

Ben looks at the star on top of the tree, wondering how his diminutive mate reached it up there but not at all surprised that she did. He, on the other hand, has no idea how he reaches up to her. 

“But I see it just a little differently in your case.” Ben’s hand traces along her waist, then her lower back. Assuring her that yes, he knows the precise shape of her. “You bring light and beauty into the world every damn day, Christmas or not. No darkness can survive all that.”

He watches her, the love a dancing thing in his eyes as the blinking lights cast their glow around her and try in vain to claim her for their own. No one will ever take her from his arms.

“Even when I’m away from you, I can still feel it. Your warmth on my skin.”

He lays a light kiss to her neck. Her hair smells of evergreen.

“And not just because we’re mated. It’s the simple fact that you exist in the world, and I’m allowed to exist with you. That’s all I need - to know that place inside me is real. To know it really is mine, because you’ve touched it. You’ve seen it. Because it glows for you.”

Her teeth seize her bottom lip. She doesn’t look directly into his face, but lays her head against his shoulder and curls in more tightly when his arms twine around her. 

She could thank him for freeing her. For bringing her to life again. But she knows she doesn’t need to. 

Instead, she says, “Sometimes, I feel like everything in the world is ours.”

Ben pulls her closer, tighter in his arms. Filling both of them up with each other. 

“It is.” He nuzzles a kiss beneath her ear. “Everything. Including happiness.”

They kiss for a while, gentle and unhurried in the soft glow of the room. Rey brings his hand to her throat, guiding his fingertips to her mating mark - still in its final stage of healing. He brings his lips there, gently caressing where he claimed her. 

When the dizzying rush of affection and safety lets her think again, Rey murmurs, “It was silly - all this decorating. I was chasing those memories like a fantasy. Really, I don’t want to go back to being the girl I was a lifetime ago.”

Ben pulls back just enough to see her face, and Rey traces the soft swell of his mouth. The lips that have worshipped every single inch of her, and the teeth that made her almighty. 

She cups his cheek. 

“That girl never held the whole world in her hand.”

With heat in his eyes like a crackling fireplace, Ben kisses her again. Her clothes are pushed out of the way, and he kindles a slow, consuming blaze inside her. His mouth slowly and intently devouring her, the heat licks all the way to her fingertips and her pinky toes, where her feet tremble against his back. 

He lies between her thighs for a long time, his head pillowed on her stomach as she strokes his hair. He traces patterns against her bare thigh in time with the twinkle of the tree’s lights. 

“I got a little scared, I think,” Rey admits, twirling her mate’s hair between her fingers. “Because I have to figure out who I am now - after everything.”

“That’s okay. To be scared.”

Ben remembers full well the equal force of terror and exhilaration that had seized him, the day he realized he was hers. When he sat at her side in a dark theatre and everything changed. His world was irrevocably reordered in a single instant - Rey at the center of all. A second sun exploding into existence and transforming all laws of nature. 

“But might I tell you one thing?” He asks, hand stroking her bare hip now. 

“Mm?” She tucks dark hair behind his ear, tracing the prominent jut with a fond touch. She remembers how he’d grumbled and looked away when she first professed her attachment to the ears he always hides beneath long hair. 

He rises up to his elbows so his eyes align with hers. 

“No matter what you discover in yourself - whatever you feel is right… I’m always here with you. Always yours.”

When he’d arrived home, she’d brought him before the tree and asked in a voice softer than her usual, _Do you like it, Alpha?_

His Alpha hindbrain had relished it, but the rest of him had been uneasy. 

“Be whoever you want. Not what you think I want you to be.”

“Ben…” 

His thumb smooths across the dip on the inside of her hip, his expression earnest. “I made you mine and I’m keeping you forever, Rey. Nothing can ever make me change my mind.”

Rey’s hands clench and unclench, one at Ben’s shoulder and one at her side. She’s not yet used to it - this feeling of pressure from inside her chest, her throat thick and tight with emotions she can’t yet fully reconcile. 

It’s so much to feel - after feeling nothing for so long. 

Ben sees her jaw moving in silence, spots the way she can’t seem to stop blinking. He’s already shifting to wrap her up close when she mouths his name. 

Eyes stinging and no words of her own seeming sufficient, Rey holds onto him and eases the weight of the moment. 

“What if I discover a chaste, God-loving woman deep inside me who’s bent on saving your soul?”

Ben chuckles, his breath tickling her hair. 

“I’d accept it, say an ‘Our Father,’ then set to ravishing you.”

The giggle that escapes Rey catches her by surprise. She didn’t know she had such a sound within her. 

They lie together in tranquil silence, until Ben asks: “Can we always have a tree, though?”

Rey tips her head close to press a kiss to his jaw. 

“You really like it?”

“Yeah, I really do. It’s beautiful, and you set it up just for us.”

Rey smiles against his shoulder, her heart humming to find the world so clear now, and so gentle.

“Then we’ll have one every year.”

And it all makes sense now - the way to make her way forward. A Christmas tree with a star. The summer air in Greece. The morning smell of Ben burning bacon. Terrace sunrises with unhurried coffee for one. Rooftop sunsets while Ben puts a blanket around her shoulders. Solitude in their own quiet corners of the world. Time to make peace with herself, in the stretches when he’s away. His body warming the sheets. The constant beat of his heartbeat beside her own.

He is the punctuation marks, the lunar cycle and the magnetic field. Between it all, her world has structure and sense and she can be anything. A blue-skyed world where she can plant flowers and paint in bright swathes. It’s a morning of endless hope and all possibility. 

“Merry Christmas, Rey.” He looks up at her, brow furrowing. “That’s what people say, right?”

She cups his face, smiling at nothing in particular. 

“Yes, Ben. I hear that’s what people say.”

* * *

There could be no happiness greater than this. Right now, Rey’s brain is incapable of imagining any contentment more complete. She lays relaxed in a nest of blankets before a gently roaring fireplace, the room filled with a soft glow from the Christmas tree, and her Alpha’s knot deep inside her. 

She has no idea how long they’ve been tied together now since their last bout eased into shared calm and Ben enveloped her in the embrace of his body. She has no idea how long she’s been staring with blissed, bleary eyes towards the fire while Ben lavishes attention all around the mating mark he gave her. Her only sense of time comes from the urgent discomfort of her heat as it builds again and she begins to whimper. Ben hushes her, “Shh, my darling. Alpha will keep you full.”

His fingers thread between hers and stretch her out in the nest - Rey on her front and Ben spread over her as he guides her arms out to extend all the way above her head. This way, she’s prone and pliant beneath him as he begins rutting into her all over again. 

He keeps his hands entwined with hers - their fingers entangled in gentleness even as the rocking of his hips grows in strength, as Rey begins to whine beneath the glorious onslaught of sensation and force, and Ben growls deep and primal against her ear. 

“My sweet little Omega. I’ll make sure you’re good and fucked all Christmas long.”

“Ben… _Ben!_ ” 

“Hush, Rey.” He releases one of her hands to press her thighs open wider. He greedily consumes her splendid, wrecked sounds as he untethers his control, fucking her like something unbreakable - like something he owns. She releases the most beautiful gasp as he cups a hand at her throat. “It’s not too much for you, is it, baby?”

“No! _Ah_ …. need you everywhere inside, just like this…. Want your cock everywhere inside me, Alpha. In my mouth, in my cunt as deep as it’ll go…”

“Good girl. _My_ good girl. All mine.”

Rey’s moan is all joy and gratitude. 

“Will you clean up and tend to Alpha’s cock with your sugary little mouth, after I’m done pumping your cunt full of me?”

“ _Yes._ Oh - oh please, Alpha. Fill up my throat too.”

“I’ll fill up every inch of you with my cum, little Omega. Because you’re happiest that way, isn’t that right?”

His words are accompanied by thrusts hard enough to push her from the nest if not for his firm hands at her hip and throat. 

“Yes, Ben, _yes_ \- so happy when I try to hold it all inside…”

His knot soon lodges inside her again, making her gasp and writhe in his arms as all the heat of his cum stays locked within her, sweetly scalding her from the inside out and burning away any discomfort while it soothes every last need and bit of yearning. 

When he finally draws out and rises up to his knees in the nest, Rey eagerly turns to take him into her mouth, sucking down every lingering taste of him she can. He pets her hair as she laps at him, humming in content with the most radiant heat blush painting her cheeks. 

“My beautiful mate. So good for me. So soft and eager, always opening up so wide for me.”

Rey nods around him, eyes fluttering up at him. The ravenous hunger of her heat is, for now, fully replaced with glowing satisfaction. She wants nothing but to worship him for it. She groans in euphoria as her mouth slides along the length of him, and her fingers move between her legs to feel his cum there, coursing out in a steady stream to coat her sex. He’d filled her with _so much_. 

She sinks her lips down around another inch of him and finally feels the head slide into her throat, while her fingers eagerly spread his cum across her skin. She swallows around him as she collects his spend on her fingertips and rubs it into her clit. She moans, low and soft around him as her fingers slide against her clit, now dripping with him. 

When Ben finally withdraws himself from her mouth, he sits back to see what her hand had been busy with between her legs. He hooks his hands behind her thighs and spreads her open to his view. When he sees the way she’s coated herself in his cum, he curses low and savage. 

“I like it, Alpha,” she murmurs, spreading her thighs open wider to him. “Covered in you. Marked by you.”

Ben’s breathing goes ragged as he thumbs her clit, feeling how wet she is with his seed. She gasps beneath him, thighs trembling as he keeps caressing her - her heat amplifying her sensitivity to dizzying heights.. 

“I could stroke and eat and fuck this pretty cunt forever. And you’d let me, Omega, wouldn’t you?”

“A-Alpha… anything. It’s _your_ cunt.”

“Always so greedy, isn’t it? My little cunt here. Always guzzling up my cum and still hungry for more.”

“ _Ah_ … want your mouth, Alpha, please…!”

Ben puts his lips to her like he means to devour her whole, his fingers stroking at her thigh as she sobs beneath him gratefully.

Later, he’ll draw her a hot bath and carry her there all wrapped up in blankets. She shakes her head and clings to him when he tries to set her down in the tub, so he climbs in with her. After washing her hair for her and scrubbing her clean, he holds her against his chest. Her back to his front, he holds her in the water as he savors the slow slide of his fingers inside her, stroking and working her most sensitive spots until he switches to play with her clit. By the time the water goes cold, Rey is both boneless and mindless with overflowing, glowing pleasure.

He helps her from the tub, dries her, and wraps her up in clean clothes, murmuring praise and endearments the whole way. Afterwards, he brings her to the kitchen and wraps her in a blanket on the counter. He feeds her fruit and holds a mug of tea to her lips. He feeds her cookies shaped like snowflakes, until she starts sucking his fingertips and whimpering again. 

At that point, he goes to his knees on the kitchen floor, opens her thighs, and takes his own nourishment. He tongues at her entrance and laps at her clit until he has his fill. He builds up the fire a bit higher in the hearth and holds her for hours in front of it, until her scent shifts to tell him it’s time to be inside her again. 

Ben slides all the way into her where they lie together in the nest. She flutters in welcome around him, and they’re both home for the holidays.

* * *

It’s Christmas Eve again, but the house is anything but peaceful. 

In the kitchen of their Scotland home, Rey finishes poking at the turkey in the oven just as Luis starts to whine again from his bassinet. Rey swipes his teething ring out of the fridge before hurrying over to scoop the baby boy up into her arms. She hushes and rocks him as she offers him the ring, sighing in relief when the baby takes it between his sore gums.

“All done, Mama!” Julian exclaims from the kitchen table, scattering sprinkles all over the floor as he flings his hands into the air for emphasis. 

“Oh? Let me see.” With Luis cradled against her shoulder, Rey comes over to see the cookies Julian just finished decorating. “You did such a nice job, honey!” she says to the grinning three-year-old. “What’s on this cookie here?”

“A snowflake!”

“Oh, of course! You’ll have to put some out under the tree for Santa tonight, you know.”

“I know!” With that, Julian bounds off into the living room - presumably to clear a spot under the tree. 

The living room is currently overtaken by a huge, twinkling Christmas tree. Ben had taken Julian out into the woods with him last week, so the little boy could help pick out their tree. Ben had chopped it down himself and dragged it back to the house on a sled. Rey doesn’t think she’d ever seen Julian so excited. Decorating had been pure chaos, with Ben snatching up Julian each time the jubilant three-year-old attempted to scale the tree in a decorating frenzy.

Rey hears the unmistakable sound of wailing begin from upstairs. Seeming to sense his twin’s distress, Luis begins squirming in Rey’s arms, his little face scrunched in discomfort as he whimpers around the ring in his mouth.

“Shhh, it’s okay, sweetie,” Rey hushes the baby, rocking him close to her chest. “I promise those teeth will come in soon.”

Footsteps sound on the steps, and a frazzled looking Ben enters the kitchen with Leah bundled in his arms. He’s gently bouncing her even as she continues to wail. 

“I think she needs Mama,” he says, a touch desperate.

Rey holds out Luis so they can trade. She coos at poor little unhappy Leah, sick with the winter sniffles, while Ben looks positively relieved to take the teething twin. 

“Keep an eye on the turkey?” Rey calls to him as she takes Leah into the living room, curling up on the couch with their tiny daughter to feed her. Leah’s wails ebb as she begins to drink. Rey trails her fingers through the baby’s downy hair and hums an aimless tune. 

Julian runs back into the kitchen: “Daddy! Look at my cookies... HEY, no eating yet!”

The sound of baby Luis whining, then Ben soothing him. Then dishes and pots clattering around. 

“Help me set the table, Julian? … Careful with the glasses, now.”

“Daddy, I’m a big boy!”

“I know, little buddy.”

“But I’m _big_!”

More clattering, then the fragrant smell of turkey and gravy.

Ben comes into the living room, Luis tucked in the crook of his elbow. 

“Almost ready to eat in here. How’s she doing?” 

Rey adjusts Leah in her arms as the baby girl continues drinking. “A bit better, I think. She definitely feels less feverish than yesterday.”

Watching his mate feed their daughter, Ben can’t resist coming to sit beside her on the sofa. Little Luis seems to savor the proximity as much as Ben does - finally letting out a happy little squeal. 

And despite her exhaustion, despite her headache, despite the fact that Julian’s presents still aren’t wrapped because she and Ben have been so utterly overwhelmed by the twins lately - despite it all, Rey grins. She lets her head tip sideways until it rests on Ben’s shoulder, and he presses a kiss to her forehead. 

Leah decides she’s full just then and starts to fuss, but her parents hush and hum to her together until her brown eyes begin to droop. In Ben’s arms, Luis seems to be following a similar inclination towards sleep. 

“Think maybe we’ll actually get a quiet dinner?” Rey whispers, scared to tempt fate.

That’s when Julian bounds into the room, exclaiming, “Mama, look! I put snowflakes on _all_ the cookies!”

In tandem, the twins burst into cries again. 

Ben gives a resigned sigh. “No such luck.” They each begin rocking and soothing their respective twin.

Frowning at the sound of his little siblings crying, Julian comes over and wriggles his way up onto the couch right between Ben and Rey. He peers into the little blanket bundles and begins making faces until he elicits a giggle from Leah. 

“You’re such a good big brother, Julian,” Rey tells him, voice endlessly fond for their oldest. Julian grins and cuddles a bit closer into Rey’s side.

Their son curled up between them and the twins in their arms, Ben gazes over at Rey, bathed in the soft light from the tree. When she catches him looking, he leans across to kiss her. 

“Merry Christmas, Rey.”

The tree lights reflect in her eyes when she smiles. 

“It is. It really is.”

* * *

“Hey! Luis stole my lights!”

“They’re not yours!”

Rey intervenes quickly, snatching up the string of Christmas tree lights before the twins start a tug-of-war.

“Luis, you already helped with the first string of lights. Leah gets to do this one.”

Leah beams as Rey hands her the lights. She prances over to Ben, who’s still tucking the first string of lights between the tree branches. “Dad! I wanna put them all the way at the top!”

“All the way at the top? Then you better hold on tight.”

Ben lifts her up and helps her tuck the first bulbs into the top branches. Luis watches with a pout and crossed arms. Rey ruffles his hair. 

“Luis, why don’t you help your brother bring up all the ornaments from the basement?”

Perking up at this big boy job, Luis dashes out from the room. 

All the while, Ava sits curled up on the couch, serenely watching the proceedings with the big star-shaped tree-topper hugged to her chest.

“Oh no, it fell!” Leah exclaims with a gasp as the lights slip from her hands.

“That’s okay, honey,” Ben assures her. “Let’s try again.”

Rey comes over and retrieves the string of lights from the floor. She hands one end up to Leah, then holds the rest of the string for her as Ben helps her fit the lights between the branches. 

The boys reappear, arms laden with ornament boxes. 

“Mom, I want to put on the icicles!”

“Sure, Luis. We just have to find them in here first,” Rey says, sitting down to help Luis and Julian carefully unpack all the boxes. 

A half hour later, the tree is bedecked with lights and ornaments. It looks nearly perfect, except for…

“Ready to put the star on, Princess?”

Ava jumps to her feet on the sofa and hoists the tree-topper high above her head, grinning up at Ben. 

“Ready!”

Ben hefts the little girl up in his arms and carries her over to the tree. He lifts her up high enough so she can reach the star to the top of the tree. 

“Wait wait, it’s crooked!” Julian exclaims. “Lilt it towards you, Ava!”

Ava adjusts the star until Julian proclaims it just right. Ben holds her against his hip, her arms looped around his shoulders as he steps back to take in the sight of their collective efforts. 

When he looks over at Julian and the twins, he finds them all staring at the tree with wonder in their eyes and smiles on their faces. 

“It’s so twinkly!” Ava says, giving Ben a squeeze. 

Rey draws close to his other side. She gazes up at him, as if the sight of his features softened by the tree’s glow draws more of her attention. 

“I think it’s our best tree yet,” she whispers. 

Ben adjusts Ava in his arms, smiling as he agrees.

“They get better every year.”

Rey lifts up to her tiptoes. She presses a kiss to Ben's cheek, then to a giggling Ava's. 

"Merry Christmas, darlings."

"Merry Christmas, Mama!"

* * *

“I’m home!” Julian calls, the thud of his suitcase hitting the floor accompanying his announcement.

The sounds of heavy footsteps on the stairs, then three younger voices calling: “Julian’s home!”

Once he escapes the clutches of his siblings, Julian submits himself to his mother’s embrace next. 

“How did your exams go? I know you were worried about that economics class…”

“Fine, I think! The Early-Modern Literature one was really the worst, but think I scraped a B at least…”

“And your flight was okay?”

“All went smoothly. No delays or anything.”

“Are you too tired out to come with us to the Martins’ tonight? They invited us over.”

“Oh, I’ll come! It’d be nice to see Tom.”

“I think he just got home from school yesterday.”

“I’ll go get changed. Oh - where’s Dad?”

“Out in the garage, working on the used car Luis talked us into buying for him. Can you remind him we need to leave in an hour? And no, he can’t go smelling like motor oil.”

Julian heads out to the garage, which at first glance appears empty.

“Dad?” he calls.

Ben’s greasy head and shoulders emerge from under the car. 

“You’re home already!”

“Just got in!”

Ben grins as he clambers to his feet, wiping his hands on a rag. He takes two steps towards his oldest son before halting with a sheepish smile. 

“I’d hug you, but I’m filthy…”

“I should shower before we go anywhere anyway,” Julian says with a shrug, rushing forward heedlessly to give his father a hug. 

Ben musses Julian’s matching black hair, grinning. 

“So? How does it feel to have the first college semester behind you?”

“I love it so much, Dad. I’m petitioning to take an extra class in the spring, and my roommate Patrick and I are going to try out for Polo.”

“You hardly wanted to come home, huh?”

“Of course I did! Had to escape that awful Scottish winter weather.”

Even after the family’s permanent move to New Zealand, Julian never forgot trips into Edinburgh with his parents. Rey and Ben had asked him two years earlier whether he might be interested in college, promising they’d find a safe way for him to go if he so desired. He’d started his application to the University of Edinburgh the very next week. They’d enrolled him under a fake name, and Ben had intensified Julian’s self-defense training before he left, making sure Julian knew how to cover his tracks and lay low. 

“Mom said we’re going over to the Martins’ in an hour.”

“Shit, already?”

“She said you’d better get cleaned up.”

“That’s a warning, if I ever heard one.”

“You’re damn right.”

Grinning again, Ben catches Julian in a playful headlock. Julian whines, knowing he’d _almost_ successfully dodged it. 

“Sorry Julian, not quite faster than your old man just yet.”

“Next time I come home you better look out, Dad.”

“Consider me warned.”

When they return to the house, the other children - all in their early to mid teens by now - are almost ready to go. 

Rey floats down the steps, clasping an earring closed while her skirts flutter around her ankles. 

“I swear, Ben. You’d better clean up fast or we’re going to be late. Our _one_ social invitation of the year.”

Ben just glides towards her with a serene smile. 

“Don’t you dare…” 

Ignoring her warning, Ben catches her with a kiss to her neck. 

“Ugh, you grease bucket! Get off!” Her tone chides but her words curl up at the edges in levity. 

“Can’t help myself, mate. When I see you all done up.”

Ben maintains enough self-awareness to pull away before he leaves any dirt on her clothes. 

Rey fists the front of his shirt before he can pull away entirely. With her other hand, she points at him menacingly.

“You’d better wear a tie, _mate_.”

“As you command, sweetheart.”

Ascending the stairs, Ben hears the children’s raised voices from downstairs. 

“You _sooo_ like him, Ava!”

“Shut up, Luis!”

“God Luis, why can’t you ever keep a secret!?”

“What? What secret? Leah!”

“I… I didn’t mean to…. Well, _do_ you like Michael?”

“I-I don’t know!”

“She’s blushing. She’s totally blushing.”

“Ava, I would just think about it, okay? Because Michael might have let slip that he might ask you out…”

“What?! Tonight? Oh my god oh my god oh my _god_...”

“...... wow, you guys haven’t grown up at all while I was gone, huh?”

“Oh shush, Julian. One semester of college doesn’t magically make you a grown up.”

Twenty minutes and a covert stop at the vault later, Ben comes downstairs, freshly showered in a tie and sport coat. 

“We all ready to go?”

“We’ve been ready, Dad!” Leah declares, pulling her shoes on. Next to her, Ava looks just a little green. 

Ava catches Ben’s arm on her way to retrieve her shoes. 

“Daddy? You’ll be there with us all night, right?”

“The whole time, Princess.”

The thirteen-year-old nods to herself before going to slip her shoes on.

Rey bustles in with wrapped presents in her arms for the family down the street. They’d come to know each other over the years, when the children started playing soccer with the Martins’ two boys. 

(Of course, the Martins believe they’re the Johnsons rather than the Solos, and that they moved to New Zealand after Ben made a fortune as an investment stock trader.)

Rey ushers their gaggle of teenagers towards the door, but keeps a halting hand on Ben’s chest. 

“You all go ahead. Dad and I will be right behind you.”

The entryway now empty, Rey sets the gifts down and turns to Ben with a stern look.

“Alright. Give them up.”

Ben does his best to look innocent. “What?”

“Ben.”

She rests a hand on her hip, fixing him with a mix of reprimand and amusement.

And Ben can feel nothing but the deepest kind of affection and awe - witnessing how she sees through every last inch of him. After all these years together, she knows him innately. 

She holds out a hand, fingers curling in a _give it here_ gesture. He pretends at a despondent sigh. 

He unbuttons his sport coat to reveal the holster hidden at his left shoulder. He unbuckles it and places it along with the loaded pistol in Rey’s outstretched hand. 

Rey holds out her other hand, expectant. 

Ben bends down, rolls up a pant leg, and produces a second handgun which he lays in Rey’s hand with due contrition. 

She sets them both aside, then fixes Ben with a sharp look. He holds both hands up in the air. 

“No more firearms on me, I promise.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Honestly, Ben. You never change.”

She steps close enough to place her palms against his chest. Methodically, she pats down his torso, thighs, shoulders, then down his arms. She slows at his left arm, feeling a shape just a bit bigger than the bicep she knows and loves. 

“Give it up.”

“Fine, fine.”

Ben reaches into the sleeve of his shirt and reveals a compact but lethally sharp knife. 

Rey takes it from him with a shake of her head, even as her eyes are soft with understanding. 

“Just because the Martins’ younger boy has a crush on Ava doesn’t mean you can threaten him bodily harm.”

“I don’t need any weapons to do that anyway.”

“ _Ben._ ”

He doesn’t look nearly as sorry as he should, but still, he sighs again and nods. 

“You’re right. I just… can’t help being overprotective.”

“I know, babe. But you also can’t go around murdering any teenage boy who dares to look at one of our daughters.”

“I wasn’t thinking murder. Just some firm intimidation.”

“Also unacceptable.”

Ben sighs again, but this time his focus tightens on Rey and a slow smile steals across his mouth. 

“Should have known better than to try getting anything past you.”

Rey reaches to twirl his tie around her fingers. 

“You really should have.”

Ben backs her against the wall just inside the door and dips down to capture her lips. 

“Mm… Ben… we’ll be… _mmh_.. late…”

She holds his tie with one hand and his hair with the other. He cups her waist and lifts her off the ground just enough so he can press his body flush against hers. 

“Deep down, part of you still loves it... Hm, Rey?” Ben murmurs between slow, decadent kisses. 

“…. What?”

He finishes licking along the inside of her bottom lip before he responds, “That I would kill for our babies.”

Rey will neither confirm nor deny the way her hips buck against him once at the words. 

“Maybe… but….” She moves both hands to her mate’s chest to push him back just enough so she can think clearly. “If you go to jail for hunting down a boy who asks Ava or Leah on a date, I’m not bailing you out.”

Ben leans back in to press his lips to her throat. 

“Duly noted.” He mouths at her pulse point, savoring the sound of her gasp. “Oh mate, what would I do without you to keep me in line?”

“Hm… Probably ten to twenty for homicide.”

Ten minutes later, the Martins down the street open their door to Ben and Rey on the front porch, hands linked and friendly smiles in place. 

“Merry Christmas! Thanks so much for inviting us and the kids over.”

“Of course! They’re all already downstairs with the new air hockey table. Come in, come in!”

And if Ben shoots the younger son a chilling glare at some point in the night, he makes sure it’s when nobody’s looking.

* * *

Lights and snow illuminate the shop windows. Rey and Ben already finished most of the Christmas shopping for the kids, but they’re in no hurry to end their rare night out in town. Rey cups a hot chocolate in one gloved hand while Ben carries the bags, her other hand tucked in his elbow. 

They pass a huge, gleaming shop window, but something about their reflection in the glass makes Rey stop in her tracks, Ben halting alongside her. 

People flow around them on the sidewalk - some laughing, some hurrying, some clutching bags and some clutching each other. 

Rey’s hand tightens against Ben’s arm as she suddenly looks upward. Her gaze traces the tall lines of the high rise buildings high above them - seeming to stretch all the way into the snowy heavens. From down here, she’d never be able to make out the sight of some person standing alone at a top floor window, gazing down at the street with sightless eyes. 

Rey looks back to her own reflection in the shop front. She’s down here - with snow caked to her shoes, a paper cup in her hand, and sun in her eyes. 

Ben’s voice comes from beside her. “Rey? What is it?”

She opens her mouth to reply, but something rises in her mind before she can. A series of images, feelings, and sounds. Inexplicable and sudden yet so very vivid.

Her own smaller feet in the snow, kicking with nearly every step. Her own smaller hand grasped in that of a woman who smiles down at her. Flying down a hill with a sled beneath her. A man and that same woman again, watching with love in their faces as she sends bits of wrapping paper flying in all directions. Sugar cookies with green icing and red sprinkles. 

“Rey?” This time, Ben’s voice is accompanied by a gentle, concerned hand at her back. 

His touch tethers Rey to the present again. And all in a rush - with just that single touch - all the lightness of a time long past is made tangible. Its essence surrounds and enfolds her. None of it is distant or strange. She knows all those joys with her own senses - has seen them all in the eyes of her own children. 

Standing still on the sidewalk as snowflakes melt in her hair, Rey looks up at her husband with warmth in her cheeks and life brimming from her eyes. 

“I’m… real, Ben. _We’re_ real. We’re real people.”

Ben looks at her, eyes gentle and cognizant. Even with his attention fixed on his wife, some part of his awareness never leaves the throng of mundane strangers flowing past them on the sidewalk. Further threats have yet to find them in the years since they moved the family to New Zealand, but Ben still remains vigilant in keeping his loved ones safe. That, and he still remembers dreaming of a day like this - when he and Rey could walk freely out and about in the world. Just another couple indulging their whims and sharing their happiness. 

He keeps his hand in place, his thumb tracing at the small of her back. 

“I know, Rey. Isn’t it something, after all we’ve been through?”

Rey can’t help the unabashed grin growing on her face. She can’t help playing with Ben’s collar as if she has not a care in the world. As if the woman standing here doing Christmas shopping with her husband is the truest version of herself that ever existed. Both the culmination and resolution of all she’s ever been.

“We’re more than something, Ben. We’re everything.”

Ben’s eyes and cheeks crinkle in the cold before he bends close to kiss her. 

“Merry Christmas, Rey,” he murmurs, right against her lips. 

Rey smiles as if it’s never been a challenge.

“Merry Christmas, Ben.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and Merry Christmas to YOU, lovely reader! I hope each one of you are enjoying a bright, joyful, and of course healthy holiday! Hope to speak with you all and share festive love in the comments! :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few unwritten scenes from the beginning of Ben and Rey's lives together: Their first days just after Ben rescued her from the Syndicate, their mating, how Ben got the facial scar he definitely has in this verse, and a few extra moments between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This AU has its claws so deep in me.... Send help.

“Come here. There’s blood on your face.”

The two of them are alone in the elevator, gliding down to street level. After they’d left the room where Interpol officers made themselves busy handcuffing the surviving Syndicate men, they’d made a brief stop at the room next door. Ben had swiftly unloaded and broken down his weapons, fitting them away into the compartments of a nondescript black case. He’d lifted his black pullover and tucked one loaded handgun into a holster strapped against his torso underneath. He’d slung his bag onto his back and taken her hand again as they departed together.

At the sound of his voice, gentle but self-assured, Rey feels herself respond immediately. Their hands still linked, Rey moves close enough for him to touch her face. With the sleeve of his pullover, he dabs away all lingering traces of the Syndicate boss’ blood. 

When he finishes, his hand lingers at her cheek. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, voice softer this time and a bit less sure. 

Rey isn’t sure what to say. Physically, she’s fine but for the bruise on her cheek. But underneath, she’s a storm of shock and disbelief. Her entire world just changed so quickly. This is what she’d always wanted, but only now does she realize she’d never been able to see anything beyond the walls of her cage. She doesn’t know the world outside. She’s not even sure she knows herself, now that she’s free. 

So she just nods, and lets her cheek drift towards his touch. 

Down on the street, Rey clutches Ben’s hand in a vice grip. Sunglasses in place on his face, Ben moves with purpose through the currents of people on the sidewalk. Rey’s free hand grips his elbow. Her eyes darting amongst the overload of faces, traffic, and open sky, she keeps up with him even as she seems to keep herself hidden against his side, sheltered from the sudden burst of noise of the outside world. 

It’s hardly as if she hasn’t been outside - it’s just that everything feels changed. Even gravity and the other fundamental forces that used to hold her in place.

“The car’s not far,” he tells her as they stand at a stoplight. 

She nods, holding onto his arm a bit more tightly as strangers move around them. 

In an underground parking garage, he unlocks a car and opens the passenger door for her. Rounding the car, he takes one last look around to ensure they weren’t followed. Satisfied they’re without a tail, he deposits his weapons in the trunk, gets in on the driver’s side, and starts the engine. 

“I have a place a few hours away, just over the Italian border. Does that sound okay?”

She nods again, numb with the dawning awareness of exactly how adrift she is - no home, not even any belongings to take with her. 

No, that’s not right… He’s taken her hand again. It’s warm and envelops hers completely. 

She realizes he’s watching her - probably hoping she’ll say something. Anything a bit more expressive. 

But when she turns to look at him, she asks instead, “What’s your real name?”

Her first words since their escape take him aback. He’s never felt such immediate intimacy with another person before, yet during the job, they’d never even been at liberty to ask such things.

Despite how strange it feels, he tells her.

“It’s Ben. Ben Solo.”

Rey recognizes the last name for the sign of trust it is. There could be a million Bens in the world, but Ben Solo is the one name among them that needs to be kept in secrecy. 

“Rey really is my name, in case you were wondering.” 

She takes his hand between both of her own, holding it in her lap. Here, alone with him - his scent in her lungs and his fingers between hers and what had seemed the terrible emptiness of her existence beginning to shade in - half of her mouth manages the beginning of a smile.

“Let’s go, Ben.”

Rey falls asleep an hour into the drive. She still holds his hand cradled in her lap, and he doesn’t remove it. 

Night has fallen by the time Ben pulls up to the small house. He’d prepped for the syndicate job from here, so the place is still stocked with enough food and supplies to last them a few days, at least. Of course, when he’d left, he could never have imagined he wouldn’t return alone. 

The sound of the garage door closing doesn’t wake her. Moving quietly, Ben rounds to her door and opens it. In sleep, she’s the most peaceful sight he could imagine. 

He watches her for a moment, as his being slowly alights with bewildering warmth - fierce yet so delicate. Safety isn’t enough for her. He wants to wrap her in silks and cashmere, in comfort and warmth. He wants to learn her desires and let them rule him. He wants to build her a palace of clouds.

She makes a soft noise when he gathers her up in his arms and lifts her out from the car. In sleep, she curls towards him, her head close against his shoulder. Ben senses that, like him, she’s had to live most of her life under constant guard - under constant vigilance that threat could come from anywhere. But as she sleeps, she seems to know no threat can reach her in his arms.

Ben carries her carefully into the house, straight to the bedroom. He lays her gently down against the pillows, gratified to see her sleep on. He slides her shoes from her feet, then lifts the blankets over her. 

He kneels beside the bed, unable to stop watching her quite yet. She appears so relaxed as she sleeps - not vulnerable, but unguarded in a way she can’t be while awake; just as he can’t. He strokes her hair with the barest touch. 

His entire existence is suddenly clear and purposeful in a way he’s never known before. He must make her waking world just as safe and gentle a place as wherever she slumbers. 

Out in the kitchen, everything looks different. Looking around, opening the fridge and the cupboards to take stock, he finds everything exactly how he’d left it. He’s the one who’s changed. 

A former version of himself would have rejected such a drastic reordering of his reality. But this version - the one who’s found Rey - is brave enough to embrace it.

Ben sleeps on the sofa and wakes before she does. When Rey finally emerges from the bedroom, Ben is whisking eggs. 

When he turns and sees her, he has to bite back the pleased noise that nearly erupts from his chest. 

She’d put on the shirt he’d left out for her. His shirt. She’d cuffed the sleeves up to her wrists, closed the buttons only just over her breasts, and hadn’t put her pants back on beneath. Ben forces his eyes up from the bare expanse of her thighs. 

“Morning. Did you sleep well?”

She nods. With a gorgeous, sleepy smile, she stretches her arms slowly over her head. She only keeps smiling when the motion lifts the hem of Ben’s shirt enough to reveal that she’d left her underwear off as well. She continues smiling when she sees him notice, eyes going wide before he breathes a curse and looks away, hands tightening at his sides. 

“I did, but...”

Her scent is almost overpowering, intoxicating to every single one of his senses. Ben struggles to think of something other than her slick on his fingers, that stolen night in the theater. 

Finally, they’re alone together. The tension thickening and warming the air between them somehow feels like the end of a path he’d unknowingly been walking his whole life. The destination he’d never had a name for.

Ben tries to hide his labored breathing, fighting to hold his weight back from the urge to just fall in, _fall in…_

He prompts in a thin, low tone: “But…?”

That relaxed, tempting smile again. He swears he might be drunk senseless on just the sight of her. 

“The bed was cold. When I woke up, I wondered where my Alpha had gone.”

Ben sucks in breath between his teeth. Every last corner of his being prickles with awareness of that small gland where her neck curves into her shoulder. The gland that had stolen all his logic away the first time he breathed its scent. That now calls out to him - in that silent, arcane language his Alpha responds to with exultant approval and hungry need.

Her potent scent leaves nothing uncertain. Every lungful Ben consumes is an exquisite, unequivocal offering, incomparable to any form of joy or temptation he’s ever before experienced. 

And with every passing moment, he can sense her questioning why he hasn’t already given in to all that sparks and dances within them, when they’re together.

Ben grips the edge of the kitchen counter before him and beats back the tempest in his chest. Beneath the hormones and chemical responses flaring to radiant life in her presence, a desperate side of his heart has broken free of its bonds and pleads with him to seize the prospect of union and understanding he’s being offered. 

It’s more than he could ever have dreamed he might find in the world. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. He doesn’t understand it - this new reality he’s stumbled into since meeting Rey. These new yearnings; this new unequivocal truth he feels in her presence. He is meant for her in every way, the physical the least among them. His existence is perfect, when she’s in it. 

And that’s why he has to…

That, and the trace of a purple bruise still lingering on her cheek. 

He forces his voice to work, and the rest of him to keep still.

“Rey…” He has to pause, tasting how _good_ it feels just to say her name - to hold some essence of her within himself. He lets it strengthen him, and pushes on. “I wanted to talk first, this morning.”

“Oh?” Her smile suddenly shrinks. The dreamy calm with which she’d sought him out evaporates, leaving her body rigid and her expression somber. She crosses her arms, hunching inward in a self-protective instinct. Ben immediately senses her confusion and distress.

_Alpha doesn’t want me after all._

Ben’s hands twitch to hold her, his lips part to reassure her, but he’s afraid if he touches her now, he’ll never let her go.

“Listen, Rey… I’ve never seen anything in my whole life as clearly as I see you. I thought my designation offered me nothing except a stomach for violence, until it led me to you. You know what sort of man I am, but I feel no shame or remorse, if it means I can protect you.”

As soon as Ben starts speaking, Rey’s stiffened muscles begin to relax. His voice is so gentle, so sure… It lulls her, reminds her how safe he makes her feel; a feeling she’d nearly forgotten. Like his presence is large enough to wrap herself up in completely and hide away from the whole world. 

“When I carried you from the car last night… I never wanted to let go. But you have to understand - I don’t want to be anything like that fucker who imprisoned you. If I could, I’d kill him a second time for putting that mark on your cheek.” Ben’s hands momentarily quiver into fists, but one look into Rey’s eyes makes him remember himself. 

“You don’t owe me anything, Rey. Keeping you with me, I can make sure neither Interpol nor whatever survived of the Syndicate ever find you. But if you want to wash your hands of all of this… I won’t ever lock a door to you or stand in your way. I didn’t take you from that place just to put you in another gilded cage.” 

His words reach Rey gradually, like waves drawn by the tide until they cover her toes. She’d nearly forgotten that with freedom comes choice, and the near-forgetting is almost equally frightening. She knows full well this is a choice already long made - so effortlessly it had nearly been unconscious. She hadn’t recognized it as something chosen for herself; had almost forgotten she still retains that power. 

From the moment Ben’s hand first curled around her neck - that backwards, unlikely way they met - her future had been irrevocably changed. A future filled with sun and fresh air - a miraculous thing she was fortunate to have happen to her. Only, that’s not how the world works at all. She _makes_ those miraculous things happen. She walks towards them and takes them for her own. 

In the kitchen, Rey takes the few steps to close the distance between them and lays her hands atop Ben’s, where he still clutches the kitchen counter. 

They both stare at the place where they touch - an occurrence no less momentous than its few previous iterations. Still containing the power to change the entire world they live in.

Rey can’t remember ever wanting anything so much as she yearns to touch him right now. His face, his hair, everything her hands can reach. But she tightens her fingers against his hands and - just as she realizes he’s been doing since she entered the room - she restrains herself at the thin edge of her self-control.

She looks up into his face - into those eyes that showed her the truth of his heart, when he killed the Syndicate boss for no reason other than to set her free. 

She breathes in, the musk of his scent dizzying in its perfection. It seems impossible that she could be the counterpart to something so glorious, and yet there’s nothing of which she’s ever been so certain.

“You left without your payment.”

Ben’s fierce effort to maintain a neutral expression wavers. He’s fighting to contain the ferocity of all she awakens in him until he knows this is what she wants - not just the desire of her omega, responding by a rote instinct that could have nothing to do with him at all. 

But she’s _touching_ him and she’s close enough to hold… He’s sure he has arms and strength enough to enclose her twice over. To shield her from even wind and raindrops. 

He turns one hand over beneath hers, his fingertips lightly encircling her wrist.

“I left with you instead.”

Rey’s smile feels a bit different now. Unfamiliar. Her smile had come unthinkingly when she first saw him this morning, her body a mess of agitation and excitement in its proximity to this Alpha who was made for her. Now, the smile comes from a place in her chest that feels tight and stiff from disuse. 

She looks down to where his wide fingers span her wrist. Captivated, she slowly fits her fingers between his, watching the way his hand could cover hers completely, but only responds in reciprocation to each of her movements. Her slim, tiny fingers bringing all of his strength into motion. 

“You know,” she says, barely a whisper in the springtime that buds in the air between them. “For a long time, I’ve had this voice in my head. It would tell me how to keep myself alive. Sometimes, it would tell me to do terrible things.” Her fingertips trace the dips and ridges made by the veins along the back of his hand. “There were moments when it told me you might have been using me to get intel on the syndicate. That when you were done the job, you wouldn’t care what happened to me.”

His fingers twitch, but not enough to interrupt her intrepid exploration. 

“I have the same voice,” he tells her, unabashed before the only person who’s ever understood what it’s like to have to rely on your worst instincts to survive. He watches the way her eyelashes move as she blinks. “It tried to tell me you might have been using me as your way out. An escape route from both the syndicate and the police.” 

Rey’s fingers traverse higher now, gliding up Ben’s exposed forearm, then tracing the soft black fabric of his sleeve and the shape of his bicep beneath.

That strange new place in her chest manages the beginnings of another smile. 

“And yet… you saved me when they wanted to take me in. After it was all over.”

His other arm gravitates towards her waist, at the behest of some force much more powerful than Ben’s ability to stop it. 

“And yet… you’re still here with me.”

Both hands now dedicated to the task, Rey maps his chest. Her fingers come to rest at his collarbones, where his shirt reveals skin. She likes how delicate he feels here - the contrast to the hardness of the rest of him.

“Ben.” She feels the way it sends a tremor through him, when she speaks his name. She feels his hand span wide and tighten a bit at her waist. Her exploration completed to full satisfaction, she looks straight in his eyes again. “You’re the first person who’s proven that voice wrong.”

His other hand now glides up her back. It comes to cup the back of her neck with deliberate gentleness, as if in silent recompense for how roughly he once touched her there. She’s practically in his arms now, near trembling as she feels his warmth seeping through their clothes, feels his scent grow thicker with all the brilliant hues of his desire for her - for her safety, her certainty, her trust, and her pleasure. 

“Ben,” Rey repeats, her voice only a sigh now, wavering at the edge of overflow. She feels herself about to be overwhelmed, swept away in the unstoppable tide that is her body’s call for him and the intoxication of being at once small and vast. Small before this inexorable glory that is her and him, united, yet vast in her embracing of its truth. But none of it feels like surrender. Instead, it tastes of freedom. 

It is pure deliverance - this certainty that he will understand her, no matter the words. 

“Finally. I’m home.”

The very second her lips close around the words, Ben is kissing them. The entire world slips away around the burst of brilliant sensation. Ben is deliberate and slow, his movements careful as his lips fold hers between and his arms shape her to him. Because this is their first kiss, and Rey deserves something gentle. Together, they taste the beginning of something eternal. 

Their lips separate when Rey gasps, soft and wondrous. Ben’s mind races to comprehend what the kiss has done to him. 

He would raze cities to the ground for her. He would build it all back with his own two hands, forging a world that only offers her beauty. 

With another sharp gasp, the spark he kindled within her quickly leaping to life, she surges up into him. He nearly lifts her feet from the floor as his arms reel her close, his need primal and yet his awareness never sharper. He feels _everything_. Her racing heartbeat against his own chest, her hands grappling against his back and shoulders, undiscerning in their hunger. The elegance and purity of her lips against his, parting at the same moment so they may at last taste each other. 

Her fingers urgent in his hair, Ben swears he was never alive before this moment. 

His mouth ravenous against her throat, Rey finally knows what it was she endured for.

Her eager, welcoming scent drenching his nerve endings - the taste of her skin and lips already beginning its possession of him, Ben feels a force rising within him beyond his ability to control. His Alpha’s presence has never been so overpowering, threatening to rush in and seize every last corner of Ben’s awareness. 

When she presses her body flush to his and whimpers insistently against his mouth, Ben forces himself to lurch back, putting some distance between them as he struggles for breath. His vision seems to swim. His hands ball into fists as his instincts cry mutiny against him. 

“Rey…” he just barely manages to rasp, every inch of him tense as he presses himself against the counter behind him and closes his eyes to the overpoweringly dangerous sight of her. Bare but for his shirt - the collar displaced by his own hungry mouth to reveal the slope of a shoulder.

Ben swallows stiffly, even as air sticks in his throat. Oxygen isn’t what his body needs right now.

Rey just watches him, eyes wide and dark, her body frozen in the shape his arms had made. Her lips remain parted, as if still continuing their kiss.

“Rey,” Ben forces out, seeing the questions in her eyes and needing her to understand. To _fully_ understand. His fingers clench around the edge of the kitchen counter again. 

“If we do this now, I’m going to mate you. I won’t be able to hold back.”

Rey’s mouth opens then shuts again, as if tasting the impact of his words. She swallows, and then smiles. A small, devious thing, yet full of calm and certainty. 

“Good.”

She approaches her Alpha. Pressed back against the kitchen counter with all his repressed hunger and strength coiled within him, she approaches with her arms open and every last inch of her exposed. Ben is blinking rapidly, unable to look anywhere else no matter how he tries. A quiet growl rumbles from his chest. Perhaps, a final subconscious warning of what he is, before she comes any closer.

Rey’s smile remains serene. She has never felt as sure nor as mighty as she does right now. One look in Ben’s eyes, one lungful of his scent, and she knows his heart. And there, reflected in his gaze, she knows herself again.

When she lifts a hand to touch his face, the growl ceases and his muscles unlock. His eyes clear - his brief fear of his own need for her resolved in her loving composure. 

“Don’t hold back,” she murmurs, her fingers tracing the shape of his cheek. “Claim me for your own. I want to belong to you - belong with you.”

Ben’s eyes flutter shut at the potent sound of those words. He bends his head towards her touch and whispers against her fingers, faint and dire:

“Ask me.”

Rey’s fingers trace the shape of his mouth, all but caressing the promise of teeth hidden within. 

“Ben. Make me your mate.”

With the ease of a breath, he catches up the backs of her thighs and lifts her up against him. His hands span nothing but bare skin - a devastating reminder of her nakedness. The shock of all that soft warmth primed for his touch finally makes him understand: She’d been ready for this from the moment she awoke. 

“Right here,” he growls, voice nothing but a single-minded rasp. His mouth fixates just above Rey’s left collar bone, right beside the slope of her neck. “I’ll claim you right here.” Rey gasps as his teeth rake experimentally across her skin. A rumble of approval sounds from his chest. “Mark you for me alone.”

Rey tangles her fingers in his hair and her tongue between his lips as he carries her back towards the bedroom. Her fingernails scratch against his scalp and her thighs tighten on either side of him at the impending prospect of finally having him within her, body and soul. _Finally_ having him the way she’s yearned for since his appearance pierced through the darkness of her life. 

Her old life - the past that will end today. 

The moment Ben feels the heat kindling between her thighs, feels it pressed against him where her legs hold him tight, the world blinks out around him. Everything coalesces into the brightest, purest white that has ever existed. He forgets everything outside the here and now - all of it insignificant. Every conscious thought, every cell in his entire body converge in a rapturous resolution:

_OmegaMateMineAlways._

Afterwards, neither of them will remember undressing. Neither of them will remember much of the details at all. Only the exultation in Rey’s voice when Ben buries himself inside her the very first time. Only the heat and symmetry their bodies make. The single rhythm of their heartbeats, speeding and fusing and dancing a pas de deux. And then, the culmination of Ben’s entire Alpha existence - the aspect of his being he’d once disregarded but now consumes him completely. Chemical stimulants, endorphins, and the essence of his Alpha in concentrated potency percolate beneath his skin, boiling through his bloodstream until - 

He makes the bite. 

Rey convulses in sudden climax, all her senses inundated past understanding. Past the need for understanding. For a timeless, breathless moment, she is not alone in her own body. Ben floods into her - directly into her blood, and she gasps against the tears building behind her eyelids. She will never know loneliness again. He is everywhere. She is everything.

The details of their first time become subsumed in the overpowering might of their mating bond. And so they continue making love, without any clear delineation of when the third time tips into the fourth, or whether the wetness coursing out each time Ben moves within her is her slick or his cum. Whether there’s even any difference anymore between his essence and hers. His body and hers. 

“Alpha. My Alpha,” Rey marvels, clutching Ben as if he’s the only real thing in her world. Her wonder and euphoria escape as tears from her eyes as one orgasm cascades endlessly into the next. She’s sure her physiology is irreversibly changed. She’ll hold and treasure the shape of Ben within her forever. 

“Yours,” Ben breathes as his hips finally begin to still. His fingers stroke circles against her thigh as he holds her close with all of him still within her. He laps up a few errant drops of blood that had leaked from the bite, then holds her with the unconquerable strength of her eternal protector as he kisses what will heal into her mating mark.

“Thank you, Alpha.”

“Omega. I will give you everything.” He lays his lips to the bite again, lost and found in the way she quivers around his knot and gasps his name in sweetness. “I’ll burn the world down before I ever let it hurt you.”

“Nothing can hurt me,” Rey breathes, eyes closed as she turns her head closer to him. “Now that I’m with you.”

Rey wakes with a start, scrabbling against the blankets. 

It’s night. This isn’t the penthouse room that’s been hers for the past six months. 

In reflex, she withdraws to the far corner of the bed, her breath escalating with fear. Has the Syndicate changed headquarters again? … Had the boss ordered her to his room for the night?

“Rey?”

Without even a look, the voice speaking her name calms her from one heartbeat to the next. Gradually, her muscles begin to relax - one by one for every memory that slots back into place.

The throbbing in her neck isn’t from some man’s cruelty. It’s.... 

Freedom. 

Understanding.

“Are you… alright?” 

Ben reaches out with careful hesitation, wary of startling her. He recognizes sleep-addled survival instincts through no shortage of personal experience. Rey senses the gentleness in his eyes before she even turns to see it. 

Tears burn the backs of her eyelids. This is all so unfamiliar. 

“Ben.”

Murmuring his name, she uncurls from her defensive posture and lilts towards him blindly. Ben immediately reaches to gather her close in his arms, bundling her against his chest and pulling the blankets up around her shoulders. 

He nuzzles against her temple, breathing warmth and soothing noises into her skin. 

He lays a kiss just beside the still-raw mating mark. It stopped bleeding hours ago, but it will take weeks to complete healing.

“Is it bothering you?”

Rey shakes her head, curling closer and working her own arms around as much of him as she can reach.

“No, no. It’s just…” She squeezes her eyes shut as she hides her face against his chest. “I forgot what this feels like.”

“What?” he asks gently, hands stroking her hair and all along her back.

“Being… safe.”

Ben’s throat constricts a little bit. He swallows, then breathes through it, holding her a little bit tighter against him. She’s made of gold. 

“Every day of my life, Rey. I’m always going to keep you safe. I’m always going to take care of you.”

Rey nods shakily, her hands trying to hold him to her as tightly as her heart clings to his words. 

He kisses her forehead. 

“I’m going to protect you. No matter what. No matter what it takes. You’re my mate now, and I swear you will always be safe.”

The Rey who hadn’t yet met Ben would have accused him of lying. How could he ever promise such a thing? 

But after kissing him and holding him inside her - after feeling his teeth in the skin of her neck and the bond that now sings between them in the purest harmony since the invention of sound... She knows he means every word. She knows every word is true. 

She takes a slow, centering breath. 

“I forgot this, too.”

Ben hums against her temple, laying another kiss there. He cradles her close in the most careful, fervent use of his strength. “What?” he asks again. 

Rey lifts her head, the budding bond between them helping her find his eyes in the dark. 

“How it feels to trust.”

“I can barely make sense of it,” Ben murmurs, his fingertips tracing shapes across Rey’s bare stomach. They lie naked and entwined - Ben riveted by the way the afternoon light dapples across her skin.

“I feel so much when I look at you - more than I ever knew I could. There’s so much need and delight. Like I was never truly alive until now.”

He can’t see her smile at his words, so she laces her fingers between his and pulls his arms more tightly around herself. 

Ben kisses beneath her ear as he adds, “Yet, I feel no need to rush. I want to know everything about you, but I know I’ll have our whole lives to learn it all.”

Rey twists in his arms until her mouth can reach his. Her lips take their time, exploring him as if it’s their first kiss all over again. The spaces where their bodies join thrum in world-altering bliss.

“Wait,” Rey gasps, her body startling when Ben begins to kiss between her legs. 

Ben lifts up onto his elbows right away, peering up at her. His eyes are keen and perceptive. 

“Did you… not like that?”

Rey searches for the right words. 

“I did. I’m just… not used to it.”

Ben’s fingertips brush across her hip - a wisp of a soothing touch. 

The heat she sees in his eyes isn’t only arousal. The warmth is impassioned determination tinged with outrage.

“If you’re comfortable, I would very much like to help you begin getting used to it.” 

Ben trails a gentle hand along her arm, until his fingers tangle with hers. He guides her hand to his hair. 

“Just pull my hair if you want to stop, okay? For any reason.”

Rey takes a moment. Ben watches and waits, unmoving but for his thumb tracing circles at her hip. He doesn’t move a muscle until, finally, she nods. 

“Any reason,” he repeats, making sure she knows he means it. Only then does he bury himself between her legs again. 

Rey gasps, pants, then releases a startled cry when Ben’s lips mold to the precise shape of her clit. 

She writhes, thighs trembling against Ben’s shoulders. The hand not buried in Ben’s hair savagely crumples the sheets. She moans and whimpers, and soon she’s gasping for breath. 

She never pulls his hair. 

“I was seventeen when I pulled a trigger for the first time.”

Rey’s been stroking his hair for the better part of an hour now. She can’t get enough. 

“I fell in with a gang and some bad company, and I was fighting with my parents. When the big-name boss offered me a prime job, I took it and never looked back. It was years before I realized that old man never did me any favors or gave me any big break - I was just a tool for him to break to his benefit. And he did. So I broke him - permanently. Then, I found myself with a reputation.”

Rey listens to every word. At the same time, she’s aware that she’s never felt as powerful as she does right now, with this dangerous Alpha sprawled languid beside her, his head in her lap. Knowing this man is hers now - and she his to protect. 

“You didn’t take over what he’d left behind?”

“No. I wouldn’t lead another lost boy down the same dark path. Nor would I kill for some other man’s ideal. I use my skills to make my own way - to defend myself and mine. That’s all.”

One of his hands comes to cover her knee and squeezes gently. Rey folds herself down over him, pressing her lips to his temple. 

“I was fifteen when I was taken.”

It’s late - or early. For some reason, it’s the only time she can talk about it. As if the words might hold less power if they never see the sun. Nonetheless, Ben is wide awake.

She speaks tonelessly through most of it, paying more heed to Ben’s warmth at her side and his wide hand resting at her hip - a comforting reminder of unconditional acceptance.

Her voice finally hiccups when she reaches the name: “Paige.”

“She was a little older than me, but we were transported and held together. We swore we’d break out together, and she was the only thing that gave me any hope. 

“We were both brought to the Syndicate headquarters together. They kept telling us how lucky we were to be kept there, instead of sold off right away. I didn’t agree. The boss was always so revolting.

“We were given small jobs. We did as we were told. I kept my head down, learned the only way I might ever escape was to win enough good graces until they lowered their guard one day. But... Paige was different. She fought them every chance she could. Especially the boss. She didn’t stop, even after he beat her. I… hated it all. I hated watching her get hurt, and hated that I wasn’t brave enough to do the same thing.”

In the dark bedroom, Rey hears in Ben’s breathing how her words affect him. But he remains quiet, listening. His hand remains warm and huge at her hip. 

“And then… she thought she saw her chance. I still don’t know exactly what happened that night. I don’t think Paige planned any of it, or she would have told me. She… got her hands on a weapon, killed two guards, and made a run for it. She was caught and dragged back within a matter of hours.”

Rey’s body begins going stiff, curling up in self-defense as she speaks. Ben shifts closer, resting an arm around her fully and holding her against the solidity of his chest. 

“The boss was there when they brought her in. He said he always knew we would be a problem one day, and that he’d eventually have to get rid of one of us. Then he _thanked_ Paige, said he was glad she’d forced his hand so now he could keep me. And then he shot her, right there in front of me.”

Ben still says nothing, but a rough, rumbling sound of equal parts distress and sympathy begins from deep in his chest. Rey closes her eyes and presses herself closer against the vibrations. 

“I stopped feeling anything after that. I didn’t care what happened to me anymore. I didn’t care what they did - I didn’t care that I was part of it. I just… went numb.”

The minutes pass, while Rey searches for any other words that may be hiding within her. She’s never let them free before, so she has no idea how numerous they might be. 

Ben doesn’t rush to fill the silence, just slides a hand along her back and ghosts kisses to her forehead. 

After five, then ten minutes, she finally lets herself relax into Ben’s arms. For now, those are all the words she finds. They’d been the ones buried most deeply, and the ones that had caused the worst singe marks. 

Once almost a half hour ticks by, Ben finally rasps in a deep, focused voice: “Rey. Listen to me.”

An unfamiliar feeling like warm weightlessness brushes along her limbs, then begins to unfold inside her chest. Her instincts supply her understanding of what it is she’s hearing for the first time: An Alpha command. 

“You don’t need to think about that anymore. You don’t need to define yourself by that experience anymore. Paige and the Syndicate boss’s actions were the result of their own decisions. Her death was not your fault. You should let yourself be free of it.”

Like a shot of whiskey, Rey feels the effect of Ben’s words spread with slow compulsion within her. She feels their presence within her carry the same gentleness embodied by his voice. She could refute their influence, if she really wanted to. 

Instead, she surrenders. She unburies the grave she’d dug and hidden deep beneath her soul. She’d meant to never gaze upon it again. But with Ben’s understanding within her - his strength joined with her own, her hands are not alone as they clear the dust and cast light into where she’d entombed a part of herself along with her friend. 

For a moment, Rey’s heart locks up in terror when she feels Paige fly free of her. She is only alone, selfish, and cowardly.

But then, the grave fills with nurturing soil and budding blooms. A hundred year cycle of death, growth, and rebirth pass in an instant, as her heart welcomes back its missing piece.

Rey keeps crying long after dawn breaks. Ben holds her until gravity finds her again. 

His shirts are so big. Not comparatively - not just _big for her_. Ben’s shirts are objectively, empirically, massive. 

They don’t look nearly as enormous when his body fills them. But that’s only because his body is equally enormous, and Rey often loses perspective of just how much so - when Ben keeps bending down to meet her eye level, to find her lips with his own, or simply to keep all of himself contained in the space that contains her. 

One of Ben’s shirts is enough to envelop two-thirds of her body in a blanket of his scent. 

By the third day, Ben looks apologetic as he dresses her in his own clothes after their shared shower. 

“I’m sorry we couldn’t take any of your things. I promise I’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe.”

But Rey - pink from the heat of the shower and the orgasm he’d given her beneath the spray - just smiles serenely as Ben threads her arms through one of his long-sleeved flannels and gently pulls it over her head. She nuzzles her nose into the fabric of the collar.

She might never want to wear anything else.

“There’s no rush.”

“You’ll be good?”

Ben’s voice is playful against her neck, but in his hands at her waist, Rey feels his reluctance and unease. 

She folds her arms up around his shoulders, stroking the hair at the back of his neck. 

“Yes, Alpha. I’ll be good for you.”

They’re just inside the front door. She wears one of his button-downs, the sleeves cuffed up to her forearms and the fabric brushing her bare thighs. He wears black from head to toe, kevlar under his sweater and his weapons packed at the door. 

Rey finds she rather likes the feel of it - exposed and only half-dressed, being held against him and his tactical gear. 

She’d rather he not leave, of course. Her earlier pouts and largely successful distraction techniques to keep Ben naked in bed with her for _‘just a little longer, just one more time’_ made that clear.

But now, her Omega finds some part of it primitively appealing: Sheltering safe in her Alpha’s den while he goes on the hunt; while he leaves to provide for her.

“The job shouldn’t take more than ten days,” he assures her. “And I’ll bring back plenty of clothes for you.”

“But I like wearing yours.”

Ben groans in frustration. “You’re not making this easy, Omega.”

But his smile is fond as he cups her face and kisses her again. He leaves a kiss over her still-raw mating mark, taking in the sight of it as if to assure himself again that it’s real, it’s permanent, before he pulls back. 

He then appears uncomfortable with what crosses his mind - unsure how to voice it. Rey’s fingers find his wrist. 

“What is it?”

His fingers tangle with hers, while his other hand finds the small of her back and rests there.

“I don’t want to tell you you shouldn’t leave the house, but for now it might be best…”

Understanding, Rey nods before he can finish. 

“I know, Ben, I agree.”

He still appears discomfited - so Rey, unbothered, presses herself to his front all over again, arms looped up around his neck. 

“I don’t mind, really. I’m not ready for the world out there anyway.”

Heedless to the fact that this will set him another ten minutes back from leaving, Ben wraps an arm around her and cups her head close beneath his chin. 

“One day you will be. I promise you that.”

They kiss all over again. Ben scents her neck one last time, and Rey laughs even as she arches up close against him. 

“I already smell like you, Alpha. I always will.”

Her words are self-evident, but they make Ben’s eyes gleam and his hold on her tighten all the same. 

“I know. But I also know that while I’m on this job, using blockers every day so no one catches your scent commingled with mine, I’ll wonder if I just dreamed you up. I’ll think you couldn’t possibly be real.”

Rey bites her lip hard. It would be a physical impossibility to press herself any closer to him. 

“But when you’re alone, late at night, and you think about this mark you gave me, you’ll feel how we’re connected.”

Rey will never tire of how her pulse speeds and her blood sings - the effect of his touch to where he bonded them. She brings their hands together over the tender imprint left behind by his bite. 

She gives him a rising, tentative smile - equally awed before this proof of their new shared reality. 

“You’ll sense me through this mark, where you filled me with a piece of yourself, and you’ll know. You’ll never be alone again.”

Ben’s eyes are unfathomably deep, filled with endless feeling. 

“Neither will you, Rey. My heart will always be here with you.” 

Rey smiles as if she’s weightless. She kisses him again. Her mate. 

_Her mate._

He looks back towards her in the house as he starts the car. She watches until he’s out of sight. 

To stave off the panic she’s afraid might descend in his absence - the delayed processing of everything since those drops of blood hit her face and Ben wiped them clean - she goes to the bedroom, takes armfuls of Ben’s clothes from the closet, and builds a haphazard nest in the bed. 

She takes deep, slow lungfuls of their combined scents. She presses her face to Ben’s pillow. She counts the steady beats of her pulse. Imagines she can feel Ben’s between each one.

The hysteria doesn’t come.

In the first few days, this worries her. She realizes now that she’d survived these last years of her life only by building walls within herself to suppress all emotion. Ben had knocked those walls down. When he was here with her, it had been only blessed birdsong and luminescent sunlight that had begun filling that empty space within her.

But she knows every beam of light brings shadow, and the shadows of all she has refused to feel for years will eventually catch up to her. Now that her heart has awakened again, she fears its eventual reckoning will find her with the force of an avalanche. She grows restless as calm days pass, wary that the longer her catharsis remains out of her reach, the more devastating it might be.

And then she understands. There’s no dark force building within her - waiting to implode when she’s most vulnerable. Her guilt, her darkest and most traumatic memories - they’ve always lived within her. Learning and accepting what they mean for the person she will become - that is a process far more inchoate and extensive than she can fathom now. It will take years until the new space within her is filled entirely, and it will fill gradually - in layers, rather than bursts. 

Lying in the bed where she and Ben became one - where she gave herself to him completely in an act of trust and faith which she long thought herself incapable of; where he made himself vulnerable and endlessly tender just for her - she realizes something else. 

It was all worth it. Whatever future pain the processing of her experiences might bring her - Ben was worth it. She’s _glad_ to feel again - even glad for the prospect of hurt that shadows all joy as surely as night follows the brightest day. Because even the darkest nights end in the brilliance of the rising sun. Because sunlight will always pierce through even the darkest of shadows. 

She is not defenseless, now that blood pumps through her heart again. Instead, she is unconquerable. There is no longer any darkness strong enough to consume her, now that she knows love. 

Ben returns in only a week - sooner than planned. Rey feels her pulse begin to speed when he’s still miles away. The moment he opens the door, she leaps into his arms. 

“Mate,” he gasps into her hair, clutching her close in his own moment of deliverance.

  


* * *

  


Ben’s been gone for well over a month now. He’d told her the job shouldn’t take more than three weeks, but all she’d heard from him since was a brief: _Ran into complications. Fine but delayed._

As the weeks pass since his message, Rey valiantly resists the urge to reach out to him. They both know to exchange communication in only the most extreme emergencies, as any intercepted messages, no matter how brief, might be used to trace back to her.

Going on almost two months, Rey keeps the phone at her side constantly. She watches it at night until her eyes slip closed, then jolts up to look at it first thing when she wakes. As her mounting concern builds towards stifling fear, she types out a simple message: _Confirm status._

She paces. She breaks things. She cleans them up. She agonizes. She doesn’t send the message just yet. She’s never had to do this before; but neither has he ever been gone for so long. 

Then, on the very day she resolves to finally send the message, the door opens. 

From the kitchen, Rey thinks it might just be wishful thinking. Fear of her own imagination sends her socked feet sliding across the floor.

The sight of Ben in the doorway nearly makes her legs collapse beneath her. Clutching the back of the sofa with a white-knuckled grip, Rey gasps through the weight of her relief. 

Then Ben closes the door behind him and turns towards her fully. When she sees his face, her lungs empty all over again. All thoughts of her weeks of torment evaporate in an instant. 

She can’t quite speak. Her mouth only barely manages to form his name as she crosses the space between them. Her feet and legs move as separate entities from her brain, which is fully engaged with processing the changed sight of her mate’s face. 

Her eyes are already damp with tears when she reaches him. 

“…… _Oh_ , Ben….”

She reaches for him blindly, her hands imprecise and desperate as they clutch his shoulders.

Ben’s hands cover her waist as he musters a small, remorseful smile. 

“I’m sorry, Rey.”

She barely hears him, her attention swallowed up by the angry, jagged laceration slicing the left half of his face. By the heartrending, permanent evidence of his pain. 

“Oh, my love…” Rey breathes, trembling slightly as she reaches to touch her fingertips to the wound - still sticky with healing. 

Ben watches her, trying to hide his own anxiety. His mouth is strained and tremulous, as Rey’s fingers map the considerable length of the cut. Her eyes swim with her own pain at the sight, and Ben remembers fear.

“I know I’m not much to look at anymore…”

Rey shakes her head roughly at his words, her mouth trembling. For a single frigid moment, like ice shattering beneath his feet, Ben despairs. 

But with a deep, steadying breath, Rey chokes out, “You’re finally home. I’m so glad...” 

She crushes herself to him, her arms tight around his waist as she burrows her face as tight against his chest as she can. Ben wraps her up in his arms within the space of a heartbeat, trying to conceal how the gasp of relief in his lungs feels like the first real air he’s known in weeks. 

This time, Rey has to ask. Holding the question back is always difficult, but this time it’s more than she can bear. 

“What happened?”

_‘It doesn’t matter’_ is Ben’s first instinct, now that he’s back home in her arms. But he owes her so much - this least of all. 

“The job was a setup. _I_ was the target. I let my guard down at the final rendezvous, where instead of the payment I expected, there was an ambush. Their knives were well concealed.”

She squeezes him closer, takes a deep, greedy lungful of his blessedly vital scent to gather her strength, and makes herself stand up straight. 

She examines the gash again, stoic and focused in her concern this time. 

“It’ll close up more in time but still, it’s already mostly dried out and scabbed over. It doesn’t look too fresh.”

Ben’s gaze flits away from her, his expression contrite. 

“You were gone for almost two months… How long ago did this happen?”

“I… I didn’t want to worry you, when it first happened. It looked worse than it was.”

“When?”

“A few weeks ago.”

Rey gapes at him. “Where have you been since then?”

Ben looks everywhere but at Rey, until he can delay no longer. “I… tended to myself in a hotel. I didn’t want you to have to see when it looked its worst…”

Rey reels back, crossing her arms as she shakes her head furiously at him. “You asshole.”

“Rey, I know it wasn’t…”

“Don’t you know the torture I’ve gone through these last few weeks?! Every minute of every day, imagining something far worse had happened to you and that you _couldn’t_ come home…”

“I just didn’t want to worry you…”

“You didn’t want to _worry_ me? What bullshit! You tell me you ran into a problem with the job and then disappear for weeks?! What did you think I was doing this whole time if not worrying?”

“I know, you’re right. I was just… I was worried myself, alright?”

“About the wound? You always shrug off your injuries.”

“No, not that.”

“What, then?”

Ben shifts his weight. His mouth goes rigid, quaking with his own discomfort at having to voice the fear that shadowed him since the injury happened - no matter how silly it might now seem, when he’s standing before her again.

“Well… about you. How you’d react, when you saw…” He swallows slowly, looking at a spot on the floor. “I’ll never look the same again.”

A measure of Rey’s anger deflates and leaves her. Usually, he only ever exposes vulnerability like this when he gives her his confessions of lives taken. The sight of her towering mate with his shoulders hunched inward and his eyes too apprehensive to meet hers unlocks an urge to cradle him close for as long as her arms can hold him. 

Just for the moment, she fights the urge. 

Rey’s expression hardens again into a scowl. She crosses her arms tighter to stop herself from reaching out towards him. 

“If you’d come home right away like you should’ve, I could have been sweet with you. But instead you made me wait for no reason at all, so now I can’t.” She turns on her heel, marching back towards the kitchen. “Come inside, you big oaf.”

Ben blinks in shock, staring after her. The first time he’d seen his bloodied face in a mirror, he hadn’t been able to make sense of his panic. The gash was relatively shallow so he knew he wasn’t at any real risk, but the blade had caught him the whole way from forehead to neck, and the unclean line would never seal up neatly. At first, saving Rey the sight of all the bloodied bandages had truly been the only thing on his mind. 

Only then he kept thinking of it. Of her - if she saw him just then with his face freshly cut open. He would be fine once the wound stopped weeping, so why inflict that pain and concern upon her? 

But it took only a few days for Ben to admit such altruism was only a mask for his true fear: What if his changed appearance caused a shift in her feelings for him?

But his baseless fear had only kept him from thinking clearly. Putting off the moment he dreaded had only created a problem where there was none. 

_Instead you made me wait for no reason at all._

Still standing frozen just inside the door, Ben stares at the floor and wrangles his emotions back under control. Something so superficial would never change his own feelings for Rey. Why hadn’t he thought of it this way before? Why hadn’t he kept faith in her? Nothing good ever comes of being away from her. 

He really _is_ an oaf. 

He follows the sound of Rey banging pots and pans around. In the kitchen, she’s heating up the contents of no less than three containers she takes from the fridge. 

She glowers at him as she stirs one of the pots. “I made something fresh almost every night - thinking tonight might be the night you finally come home.”

“Rey, I’m sorry…”

She quickly hushes him with a stern finger in the air. “Be quiet. You’re going to sit down there, you’re going to eat, and then you’re going to let me thoroughly examine your wound. Knowing you, you probably doused it in disinfectant every day and inflamed it all to hell…”

Ben complies, sits down, and says nothing more. He watches Rey move around the kitchen like a thundercloud, hardly sparing him a glance even as she piles a plate high with roast chicken, spaghetti, and meatballs. His remorse and anger with himself have both already faded - dissipated like a rainshower before the force of the sun. 

Even though every day he spends apart from his mate overflows with longing for her, that is nothing before what he feels when he returns to her presence. Even when she’s angry with him, when she’ll barely look at him and hasn’t kissed him yet, she replaces the whole world outside their door. He can’t help smiling as he watches her, basking in her. 

When she places the plate and silverware before him, he catches one of her hands before she can pull away. He hasn’t gotten to kiss her lips yet, so he kisses the back of her hand. 

“I’ll eat everything you made. I promise.”

For a second, it seems she might crack. But she yanks her hand back and rekindles her glare before he can say anything more. 

“You’d better. Now eat while I get the first aid kid.”

Their various homes and flats are all equipped with medical supplies to tend to all manner of injuries. Once Ben finishes eating and comes into the living room, Rey has retrieved and set out everything she might need. 

“Come sit down over here,” she orders. 

Ben sits on the sofa before her. “I think it just needs time and air at this point,” he supplies.

Rey scowls at him. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

When she kneels between his knees and leans close to inspect the gash, Ben stuffs his hands under his thighs to stop himself from touching her. He can’t stop himself from staring at her though, even as she turns his head back and forth and studies the wound with a crease of concentration between her brows. 

“Did you even use any antibacterial treatments?”

Ben shakes his head as much as her grip will allow. “Afraid not.”

Rey sighs loudly. “Of course not. Fuck, I guess we just keep all these supplies here for _my_ health.”

She releases him, but before he can even think of reaching out for her, she admonishes, “Don’t even think about moving.”

Silence curls around them while Rey first fetches a damp washcloth to ensure the healing wound is clean. Then, she prods him to lay on his back on the sofa while she painstakingly dabs no less than four different antibacterial, protectant, and scar-reducing ointments across the whole length of Ben’s injury. 

It takes nearly an hour. Ben remains quiet and behaves himself. Rey barely notices, thinking only of whatever she can do to spare him any more pain or discomfort during the remaining healing process. 

She’s just finished dabbing the final ointment where the gash reaches his neck when, finally, her emotions overwhelm the dam she’d erected. 

He’s closed his eyes by this point, but she has a feeling he’s still awake. She doesn’t care. 

She kneels beside him and leans in to kiss his forehead. Her fingers threading into his hair and tears blurring her vision, she whispers, “Mate, you should have let me take care of you.”

Ben sits up in a flash. Before a single one of her tears can fall, Ben pulls her close. His knees bracketing her hips and his arms a soothing ring around her, Rey grips his shoulders, holding his head tight to her chest with the uninjured side of his face pressed against her. 

“I know, Rey. I didn’t think. I’m so sorry.”

“You must have gone through hell, all alone,” she musters, trying to keep her voice as steady as she can even as her fingers tremble against his shoulders.

“It wasn’t so bad. But I wish I’d been here with you. I should have been here with you. I’ll never do it again, Rey, I swear.”

“And don’t ever - _ever_ \- make me wait like that again.” She squeezes him against her for emphasis. 

He tightens his hold at her hips in understanding. 

“Never. You’re my mate, my partner. I know now, there’s nothing to hide from you.”

She relaxes her hold on him just enough so he can lift his head to look up at her. Rey gingerly cups his face between her hands, then tilts her head down to kiss either side of the gash across his cheek. 

“It’s just a part of you now,” she murmurs, fingertips stroking along his jaw. Then, she finally gives him the kiss to his lips he’d been waiting for. 

She watches the gratitude and relief in her mate’s eyes, before mustering a stern expression.

“But that is _not_ license to be reckless. If you get another injury this bad, I’ll kick your ass.”

Ben’s somber nod wars with the beginnings of an amused smile, while he pulls her a little tighter against him. 

“Threats from you are the only ones that scare me.”

“Good.”

Giving in to the appeals of Ben’s searching hands, Rey clambers onto the sofa with him. With Ben on his back, Rey lays her head on his chest and lets him hold her. She lets her lungs fill up with his scent, until every part of her being is cradled within his. 

A thought strikes her through the approaching haze of safe, contented sleep. She’s slept so little these last few weeks. She musters only bleary words, “In case I didn’t say…”

“Hm?” Ben hums, still awake as he focuses on the way Rey’s hair shines beneath his fingers.

Sleepily, Rey nuzzles against Ben’s chest a bit before her breathing shifts towards sleep. Her voice is fuzzy, warm, and unthinking. 

“You’re still so beautiful.”

  


* * *

  


Ben already regrets taking the job. Only now does he recognize the real reason he accepted: He’d seen something of Rey in the girl’s picture. 

Finding her had been easy enough. Breaking her out from her kidnappers’ hideout had been even easier. 

He’d expected the seventeen year old to be shell-shocked: Easy cargo to return to her politically-influential and exorbitantly wealthy father. 

He didn’t anticipate _this_ being the most trying part of the job. 

“I think I was hit in the back here. Will you check to make sure it’s not serious?” the girl asks, eyes wide and mouth nearing something approximating a pout. Her hands are already halfway to the hem of her shirt. 

This is no less than the third mysterious “injury” coincidentally located under her clothes. 

Ben just gives her a withering look. “No. I’ll be in the other room. Don’t bother me unless you’re bleeding.”

Ben glances back before closing the door between their hotel rooms. “We’re on the move at 5. You’ll be back to your father by evening.”

In the middle of the night, Ben abruptly wakes at the sound of movement in the room. His hand is halfway to the handgun under the pillow before the damn girl exclaims, “It’s just me!”

Ben swears under his breath. “Do _not_ do that again. Get back to your own room.”

Much to Ben’s irritation, she shows no sudden inclination to listen. 

“It’s just that… it’s the last night before you hand me over and, you know, I’m really thinking we should just go full James Bond.”

Ben massages his temples with one hand, wishing with all his might that he were sleeping right now. 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know. The hot spy guy saves the girl in distress; then they have sweet, passionate sex after a few arguments’ worth of foreplay.”

Ben sighs loudly and forcefully. “I am _not_ being paid enough for this.”

He sits up just enough to speak clearly. “I’m not a spy; there’s been no ‘foreplay’ - I just happen to find you supremely irritating; and there will be no sex of any sort.”

She doesn’t move. Instead, she summons up a pitiful expression. 

“It’s just - I really need the touch of a _good man_ , after those brutes…”

Ben knows for a fact that none of the kidnappers touched her. She’d been political capital, too valuable to damage. So she’s lying, and flippantly to boot. A flare of rage catches him in its crossfire.

“You stupid girl. Such things are never to be joked about.” 

His patience utterly spent, Ben clambers to his feet and takes her by the arm, unceremoniously dragging her back to her own room. 

“Ow! Sorry, sorry, you’re right - that was bad form…”

“To say the least,” Ben grunts, still frowning thunderously. 

But before he can toss her back into her own room and barricade the door between them, he notices her leaning in to…. sniff at him?

Then he realizes: It’s the middle of the night, which means his blockers from the day before have worn off. He swears under his breath. 

The girl’s eyes suddenly go wide as she stares up at him. 

“You’re… mated,” she says, incredulous.

Ben’s frown deepens. 

“None of your fucking business.”

But now the girl has a crafty look on her face, as if she’s finally in on the joke.

“You know, what happens tonight doesn’t have to be _her_ business either.”

“Jesus _fuck…_ ”

Ben marches back to the doorway before she can make another grab at him. 

“Will you at least tell me about her? Please?”

Ben spares only a glance back, unmoved.

“I’ll tell you one thing. Then you’re going to go the fuck to sleep and not say a goddamn word to me tomorrow, understood?”

She nods quickly. “Fine, deal!”

Ben already has a hand on the doorknob to shutter the door between them. 

“I’m mated to the love of my life and there’s no one in the whole world I’ll ever want except her. Now good _night._ ”

Ben is pleasantly surprised the next day when the girl stays true to her word. She barely speaks as they drive through the day. His irritation hasn’t waned enough though to break the blessed silence. 

A half hour out from the meeting point, she finally speaks up:

“Will you apologize to your mate for me?”

“Whatever for?” Ben asks, quirking an eyebrow behind his sunglasses.

“For trying to seduce you.”

“You weren’t exactly successful.”

“I know, but… if I were mated to you, I’d hate for some other girl to act the way I did. I’m sorry.”

“Noted.”

“Also… she probably knows this already, but… she’s really, really lucky.”

“It’s not luck that made me love her. Luck had nothing to do with it.”

“Sure, but… she found a mate who’s so devoted. There’s something really good in both of you to bring you together like that.” 

“You don’t know me, or anything about me.”

“I do. You saved me from the kidnappers, then saved me again from myself. It was really, really stupid, what I tried to do last night. It could have gone very differently for me, if you weren’t such a good mate. So thank you.”

“I think you’re giving your powers of seduction too much credit. I wasn’t exactly caught in moral conflict.”

This makes her smile, for some reason. “That doesn’t have to do with me at all. Just how much you must love her.”

“Right. At least you learned a useful lesson.”

At the meeting point, she lurches towards Ben with the stubborn intention to hug him, but he stops her at arm’s length.

“Don’t get attached to me, kid. Go home and forget about all this. You can be damn sure I will.”

Her lip quivers a tiny bit. “Yeah. Right.”

After her father finishes hugging her and dabbing at his relieved tears, he withdraws an envelope from his breast pocket containing Ben’s payment. The girl grabs her father’s arm, quickly leaning up to whisper something in his ear that Ben thinks sounds suspiciously like, “Pay him more.”

Ben quickly darts forward to snatch the envelope, before she engineers any delays. 

“What we agreed upon is perfectly satisfactory. Consider the contract executed.”

He doesn’t even waste a second counting the bills in the envelope before making a beeline back to his car. 

Not even an hour out of town, he’s suddenly overcome with longing for Rey. He has only one other active contract right now, but he doesn’t need the whole contracted period to hunt down a few rogue intelligence agents. He’d last left her in Paris, but a message from her had contained their code for Seoul. She sometimes moves between their properties when he’s gone for more than a month - just to remain cautious. 

He’s on a plane that very day. 

_I’m coming to you, Omega. I’ve missed you so,_ he silently tells her, once they’re again in the same city. 

Rey is right there at the door when Ben opens it, smiling and barefoot and radiant. She’s in his arms half a heartbeat later, he’s inside her ten minutes later, and the world is utterly, uncompromisingly, perfect. 

“I thought you’d be another few weeks,” Rey says a long while later, her voice softened and nearly floating after coming for the third time. She’s smiling a hazy, glowing smile into the pillow as Ben’s hands continue an appreciative stroll along the planes of her body; as his lips keep brushing across her face. 

“Couldn’t stay away for that long. I missed you too much.”

Rey lifts herself up just enough so her smiling lips can catch his, and they dance together for a time. 

They tumble together into another two rounds:

“Love fucking you when you’re still hot and dripping from the last time I was inside. Never want to stop.” 

“Wish you never would. Stretched around you is my favorite thing to be. Like I’m infinite. There’s nothing better, Ben. Nothing.” 

“Rey… _Rey_ …” 

“Ben… _God_ , my body feels so good when you’re inside it. Don’t stop.”

“You’re so soft inside. Like something from another world. A place where I want to stay forever.”

“Let’s live here together. We don’t need anything else.”

“Just you, Rey. Nothing else.”

“I love you, Ben, love you love you-”

Afterwards, Ben lies between her open thighs and laps slowly at her clit as his cum drips from her. She’s shaking from head to toe as she nears the upper echelon of stimulation, but she doesn’t want it to stop - the way Ben takes his time savoring her, the way his tongue can trace the precise shape of her, even with his eyes closed to focus on how she tastes; the way he closes his lips in a perfect seal to her clit and sucks with tenderness more generous than she could ever imagine. 

As she nears yet another climax, looking down from truly dizzying heights now, Ben slides two fingers through his own seed to press deep inside her - grounding her with the solidity of part of his body filling hers. Reassured that he’s there to hold on to - to guide her - Rey lets go. Her heartbeat rushing in her ears, every muscle in her whole body locks up and then releases with the sheer power of it all. 

It seems a long time before her vision focuses and her thoughts become lucid again. When they finally do, Ben is holding her and the world is utterly, uncompromisingly, perfect. 

Eventually, Ben gets around to telling her. 

Rey’s first response is to laugh so hard, she nearly rolls off the bed. Ben moves quickly to tuck her securely beneath his arm again, a bit of mirth pulling at the corners of his own mouth now. 

“That poor girl,” Rey gasps, wiping her eyes as her laughter finally subsides. “She’s going to be in love with you for ages still.”

“Poor girl? What about poor _me_? I had to put up with nearly three days of that.”

“Yes, honey, you’re certainly deserving of sympathy. It must have been so terrible, having a seventeen-year-old throwing herself at you.”

Once Rey collects herself and Ben stops grumbling, Rey turns to regard him semi-seriously. 

“I do appreciate how you handled the whole thing - and that you took a job like that in the first place. It’s not your standard fare.”

Ben’s fingers play across her arm. Neither of them need to voice what made him take the job. Just one of the countless ways Rey’s presence in his life has changed him. 

“But she was right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Rey cups Ben’s face to bring him closer to her, until she can press her nose to his in the softest nuzzle before kissing each corner of her mate’s lips. 

“I am incalculably lucky.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't.... stop.... writing.... these two...... 
> 
> Let me know your favorite parts and any other moments from throughout their lives you might want to see more of! More scenes with Ava might be likely... She's just uNfaiRLy cute to write.
> 
> Thanks so much to anyone continuing to tag along on this wild (directionless??) ride! :))


End file.
